At first sight, Swede Levov is an unlikely protagonist for Philip Roth’s new novel. Ever since Alexander Portnoy’s celebrated complaint of 1969 ‘put the id back into yid’, Roth has specialised in transgressors – discontented trashers of Jewish, American and Jewish-American decencies. And this speciality reached a high point with his last novel, Sabbath’s Theater, […]
When Pietro Russell, the anti-hero of A Fool’s Alphabet, thinks of an afterlife, he imagines ‘a hell that is entirely composed of hotel bathrooms’. There will be the bars of soap, too tightly packed in their miniature wrappers and the roll of lavatory paper, neatly folded on the end sheet into a ‘V’ by the […]
This is a first-person, mock-confessional novel, the autobiography of Charlie Fairburn, a successful screenwriter who is given a few months to live by his doctors. He decides that he must write something worth while, a novel that will be his legacy to the world. Leaving his daughter and ex-wife behind, he sells his house and […]
Sheathed in silver and sporting a seductive sobriquet, Jim Ballard’s latest novel is as alluringly tricked out as any lame starlet from the Riviera it describes: a companion piece to 1996’s Cocaine Nights, it once again explores this startlingly talented author’s fascination with the way crime and recreation may interact with the technological temptations of […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm