John Lanchester’s personal venom
John Lanchester’s new novel offers a darkly funny vision of bitter London professionals
ByBook reviews
Read all the latest book reviews from the New Statesman and discover the best novels, non-fiction, essays and biographies. If you’re looking for something more specific, explore our sections dedicated to politics books and history books.
Kathleen Stock, born-again conservative
The philosopher’s new book on assisted dying is part of a developing critique of moral libertarianism
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Jan Morris’s defiant life
The transgender travel writer was both temperamentally conservative and deeply unconventional
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Gwendoline Riley is haunted by herself
The author’s new novel, Palm House, lacks her usual virtuosity
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The curse of individualism
Rowan Williams’s new book reimagines solidarity for our times
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Colm Tóibín’s sounds of silence
In his latest collection of stories, Tóibín endows his characters with plenty of feelings but fewer words
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O Father, where art thou?
Literature still looks to the clergy for answers
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Brandon Taylor’s rebellious representations
Minor Black Figures novel depicts a black aesthete struggling to defy the fraught expectations of the art world
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The Apple half-century
How the electronics company went from near bankruptcy to global dominance – and changed our lives along the way
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The Whig interpretation of Europe
Roderick Beaton’s spirited history of the Continent cannot square its idealism with the bloody story that it tells
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Surviving forced labour in wartime Berlin
Ian Buruma’s account of his father’s years in a German factory accounts department is moving but limited in scope
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The Rasputin legend
He dazzled the tsar and tsarina with his virile charisma. But, as Antony Beevor shows, he also inspired their demise
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We must love WH Auden or die
The poet was a restless spirit, haunted by his own Englishness
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The dark shadow of Palestinian exile
Hannah Lillith Assadi’s latest novel, Paradiso 17, draws on her father’s displacement
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Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the death of the Hollywood dream
In the 1970s, an ingenious trio of film auteurs conquered Hollywood. But is the renaissance now over?
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How academics ruined Shakespeare
It is time to retrieve the playwright we thought we knew – the man who asks universal questions – from…
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Asako Yuzuki’s acquired taste
Butter author Asako Yuzuki’s latest novel offers clues about what is behind the vogue for Japanese fiction
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Alice Coltrane’s transcendent score
A biography of the spiritual jazz musician reveals the tension between her devotion to John and to a higher calling
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The rise of British Muslims
What do two politicians’ memoirs reveal about the changing fortunes of British Muslims in public life?
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Melvyn Bragg’s class act
Was his success “social mobility”, or just good luck?
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