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
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk