Jane Gardam’s dispatches from the past
The late British writer produced novels haunted by uprootings, death, and the twilight of the British Empire.
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Jane Shilling
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Hamid Ismailov’s new novel blurs the boundaries between life and poetry
The Devils’ Dance is an intricate mixture of fact and fiction about the imprisonment and death of Uzbekistan’s greatest…
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Fasting and Feasting: the eccentric life of food writer Patience Gray
Journalist Adam Federman clearly venerates his subject, and his research is overwhelmingly diligent.
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“Living in the lap of luxury“: the strange wartime diaries of the woman behind Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren's diaries reveal how Pippi's creator lived happily during the war – but was ascerbic about Britain's conduct.
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Alone in Berlin fans will be satisfied with a newly translated Hans Fallada
Rawer and more unevenly wrought than Alone in Berlin, Nightmare is the necessary precursor to that great work.
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The stuff of life: how A S Byatt intertwined the lives of William Morris and Mariano Fortuny
In Peacock & Vine, Byatt has turned works of art and their shade, texture, patina and heft into words.
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Escape fantasies are common, but few of us actually leave – in How to Measure a Cow, someone does
Margaret Forster's posthumous novel has much to admire – from its tragicomic opening chapters to the authenticity of its unusual…
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Han Kang’s Human Acts chronicles the tragedy of ordinariness violated
Human Acts deals with the obliteration, both physical and psychic, of hundreds of its own citizens by the South…
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A Manual for Cleaning Women allows us to watch a virtuoso stylist at work
The short stories by Lucia Berlin featured in this selection are perfectly poised.
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