Wordsworth claimed to so dislike the thought of his letters one day being published that, in order to guard against this possibility, he always took pains to make them as bad and dull as possible. Even if he did not intend this claim to be taken seriously, the reader is forced to agree that his […]
What is left to say about the life of Thomas Mann? It is not so long since the voluminous, albeit fragmentary, diaries were published. The dozen or more volumes of correspondence are constantly being added to as new letters come to light. The family itself produced numerous memoirs. In English, we have had the biography […]
One morning in January 1946, an old man living in southeast London received a letter from the chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra inviting him to return as leader, a position he had been kicked out of as a Jew in March 1938, when Austria became part of Hitler’s Germany
While it would be surprising – statistically, if nothing else – for all four thousand male professional footballers in England to be straight, it’s not hard to see why any gay players might choose to keep their sexuality private, not least because the chairman of the English FA
I used to enjoy eating barbecued octopus. Peter Godfrey-Smith has spoiled it for me. I know now that an octopus is fearfully and wonderfully made, just as the Psalmist tells me I am, and so to eat it seems like a kind of cannibalism
It shames me to admit that I came somewhat late to Henry James. In my adolescence I read The Turn of the Screw and, being young, largely missed the sly and appalling ambiguities of this ‘trap for the unwary’, as James himself described the novella – is it a ghost story, or a study in hysterical mania
In the early 20th century, the Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach devised a test for examining people’s personalities based on their responses to sets of inkblots. In the Rorschach test, ‘ten and only ten’ inkblot patterns are used
Has George Eliot been lucky in her biographers? Since Gordon Haight’s monumental classic biography, published in 1968, her story has been rewritten again and again, mostly by women. Eliot was a writer with many names and
Ever since Shakespeare labelled Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a ‘murderous Machiavel’, the word ‘Machiavellian’ in popular culture has meant being devious, cunning, scheming and quite prepared for the end to justify the means. Most scholars would agree that the popular image is a distortion of the real Niccolò Machiavelli’s ideas. In Be Like the Fox Erica Benner brings to life a Machiavelli who’s a man of considerable political principle. And not only that: he’s also a bright and entertaining sort of chap with whom I’d happily knock back a bottle of Chianti
Pachinko opens with the portentous words ‘History has failed us, but no matter.’ The novel is a sweeping, engrossing family saga, written in simple prose, covering eighty years and four generations. Along the way we learn a great deal about the society, culture and history of Japan in the 20th century, seen always through the […]
As the British government becomes increasingly eager to strengthen trade links with China, it is worth sparing a thought for those writers and journalists who are imprisoned for their writing or otherwise harassed, in violation of their right to free expression. The number of detained writers in China is among the highest in the world. […]
Plots involving tortured children may not be a new development in crime fiction, but to me they are new and very unwelcome. In Rattle by Fiona Cummins (which I reviewed here last month), children suffering from a painful and incurable disease are abducted and ill-treated. In Say Nothing by Brad Parks (reviewed below), the cruel […]
Amid the tumult of China’s modern history, perhaps the most profound change has been the swiftness with which its towns and cities have grown. In 2012 China’s urban population exceeded the number of rural dwellers for the first time. This transformation began in 1978 with the ‘Reform and Opening Up’ policies, which introduced free-market principles […]
Tim Parks’s new novel begins with a dilemma. Should the middle-aged narrator view his mother’s corpse? Thomas cannot make up his mind. But then he can rarely decide about anything. In a book rich with biblical references, he is Doubting Thomas. But he is also Thomas the Twin, the other name for the dubious apostle. […]
Keeping track of the many clichés sprinkled throughout Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, I found myself assembling a sort of Reader’s Digest-style condensed version of the whole: ‘impressionable youth’, ‘going forward’, ‘in stark contrast’, ‘boggled the mind’, ‘Saeed steeled himself’, ‘there being a nip in the air tonight’, ‘Saeed’s desperate entreaties’, ‘Neighbourhoods fell to the militants […]
Sara Baume’s A Line Made by Walking is a novel formed by meandering, two steps forward and one step back, over the same small patch of Irish earth. Its aimless artist-heroine, Frankie, retreats to her late grandmother’s bungalow in a state of existential despair. The bungalow, in the remote countryside, ‘shimmered with healing potential’, and […]
On 20 February 1862, a year into the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s third son, Willie, died of a fever. He was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown. This first novel, published at the age of fifty-eight by the bestselling short-story writer George Saunders, takes over from there. Set on a single night in […]
Anyone who’s ever taken part in a Sunday cricket match will have some great stories to support the truth that it is the superior form of the game: trekking out each weekend to play hilariously named teams at wildly varied venues and pitches, some indistinguishable from a construction site, some Wodehousian idylls; turning up three […]
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘In matters of the heart, cats are at the heart of the matter.’
So says @OSoden on the explosion of cat mania in the early twentieth century.
Oliver Soden - Pussies Galore
Oliver Soden: Pussies Galore - Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
literaryreview.co.uk
A recent inquiry found that British security services had effectively licensed the IRA assassin known as Stakeknife to commit multiple murders.
@malodoherty picks apart the murky world of spying and counterespionage in Northern Ireland.
Malachi O’Doherty - Belfast Confidential
Malachi O’Doherty: Belfast Confidential - Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice ...
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Creative non-fiction, I am so sick of this bullshit’, says Michael Anderson, an editor of the New York Times Book Review.
@rosalyster returns to its genesis.
Rosa Lyster - Two Sides to the Story
Rosa Lyster: Two Sides to the Story - The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble Rousers, O...
literaryreview.co.uk