Carter peg for Gothic insights
Inside The Bloody Chamber by Christopher Frayling (Oberon Books, £14.99) As a freelance writer, I always slooked for a “peg” to justify why the piece I wanted to write should be commissioned....
View ArticleDenmark’s Constance still rings true
Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen Dedalus £9.99 The English establishment was shocked by Lady Chatterley’s Lover and its depiction of raw female sexuality, which questioned thtradition of women...
View ArticleBlack comedy takes the lid off modern Russia
LIGHTHEADED by Olga Slavnikova Dedalus £12.99 Maxim T Yermakov has come up in the world. Leaving his parents in the sticks, he made his way to Moscow and is now a thrusting marketing guy in a chocolate...
View ArticleHow corruption defines the nature of Putin’s Russia
THE SENILITY OF VLADIMIR P by Michael Honig Atlantic Books £12.99 Satire is encouraged in Putin’s Russia as a harmless way of letting off steam, but it is unlikely Michael Honig’s latest work will...
View ArticleSpace for an alternative Scotland
SPUTNIK CALEDONIA by Andrew Crumey Dedalus £9.99 When he grows up, Robbie Carlyle wants to be Scotland’s first astronaut. In the meantime, he is stuck with his trade union activist dad, housewife mum...
View ArticleA journey, a corpse and a chimpanzee
THE HIGH MOUNTAINS OF PORTUGAL by Yann Martel Canongate Books £16.99 Yann Martell adopts Ursula Le Guin’s attitude to travel: it is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that...
View ArticleVenetian mystery of a woman’s past
A MAN OF GENIUS by Janet Todd Bitter Lemon Press £16.99 The dark side of Venice has always attracted authors, both Italian and international, contrasting the city’s decadence and glory with the...
View ArticleTroubled, gifted and black
WHAT HAPPENED MISS SIMONE? by Alan Light Canongate £20 Nina Simone was as complex as her music. The very sound of her name still evokes a smoke filled voice wrapping itself around every song and making...
View ArticleImaginative mix of history and fantasy
I AM RADAR by Reif Larsen Vintage £8.99 Reif Larsen’s latest novel is supremely ambitious, taking in quantum physics, recent events in Cambodia, the Balkans and Congo, mixed with byways which fascinate...
View ArticleSimilarities across the Asian divide
Crystal Wedding by Xi Xiaobing Masked Dolls by Shih Chiung-Yu Balestier Press £12.99 each British fiction readers are often berated by publishers for reading few books in translation. We are too used...
View ArticleGoogling the Renaissance
The Tower by Allessandro Gallenzi Alma Books £7.99 Giordano Bruno was a man of genius – a philosopher, mathematician and poet with a prodigious memory. As a cosmologist he expanded on Copernicus’...
View ArticleBooks: Beware who your friends are
I?Am No One by Patrick Flanery Atlantic Books £12.99 We live in the age of Big Brother: too much is known about each of us by both the state and commercial organisations. Yet what if the information...
View ArticleBooks: A great European writer
Cousin Bazilio by Eca de Quieroz Dedalus, £12.99 The painting of The Bride by the celebrated artist Paula Rego adorns the cover of this book. Fittingly so. For Eca de Queiroz is her favourite author....
View ArticleBooks: Early, lurid, hard to read
The Jesus Man by Christos Tsiolkas Atlantic Books £8.99 Christos Tsiolkas is an author who explores the new Australia: a country breaking from its past but still unsure of its future. The gay son of...
View ArticleBooks: A modern slant on myths
Arcadian Nights by John Spurling Duckworth Overlook £8.99 For those who loved the Greek myths of their childhood but are a bit hazy on the details, John Spurling has produced the perfect book. Writing...
View ArticleBooks: Magnificent 19th C epic
The Maias by Eca de Quieroz Dedalus £14.99 Translators are too often passed over as if their technique is almost administrative – something that will be replaced by Google in years to come. Instead...
View ArticleBooks: Historical mishmash Trump will love
El Paso by Winston Groom Liveright £15.99 This is truly a book to celebrate the birth of the Trump era. A not particularly well written dodgy historical novel in which rich Americans –who have pulled...
View ArticleBooks: The dark side of TV
Rasmus:?A?Television Tale by PJ?Vanston Matador £8.99 Satire is meant to be savage but this supposed attack on the people who inhabit the world of television and their values actually targets the...
View ArticleBooks: Politically selective
A People’s History of the Russian Revolution by Neil Faulkner Pluto Press £12.99 Iimagined this was a book about the role of ‘the people’ in the revolution, rather than the leaders. After all, when the...
View ArticleBooks: Myths and spin
Wonders Will Never Cease by Robert Irwin Dedalus £9.99 In Robert Irwin’s fifteenth century Britain, myths are born, while legends are lived, deaths are foretold, ghosts walk abroad and magic is only...
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