Jake Kerridge
Jungle Book
The Devil’s Garden
By Edward Docx
Picador 240pp £12.99
When the great parasitologist Dame Miriam Rothschild was asked when she began to believe in the Creation, she replied ‘when I discovered that the flea had a penis’. If the narrator of Edward Docx’s third novel, a myrmecologist (ant-fancier) called John Forle, is not quite moved to embrace faith by his researches, he does come to question the validity of some of Darwin’s evolutionary theories.
Forle hopes that his work at a remote research station on the banks of the Amazon will prove that a society thrives when its members act selflessly. Ants seem to be ‘eusocial’: they work, and often apparently choose to die, for the good of their community. Darwin himself
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
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk