Fang Fang’s acts of resistance
The Chinese author’s controversial novels are powerful narratives of patriarchal violence.
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.
The ghost of Muriel Spark
In her work and life the writer was obsessed with biography – but when she authorised her own she loathed…
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English literature’s last stand
Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline finds itself on the margins of modern society.
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How Russia became a franchise of the Wagner Group
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was the beginning, not the end of a new age of mercenary conflict.
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The People’s Republic of iPhone
How Apple unwittingly assisted China’s global technological dominance.
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Have we reached peak humanity?
Johan Norberg’s history of civilisation is an impressive conceptual achievement – but it has little to say about our own…
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The epic of James Joyce
How Richard Ellmann’s capacious 1959 biography shaped modern life writing.
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Neo-Nazi safari
How close can any journalist get to the English far right?
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From Helen Oyeyemi to bell hooks: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Irascible by Adrian Clark and Richard Calvocoressi and To Have or to Hold by Sophie Pavelle.
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The vagus nerve industry
Can a small and unassuming bundle of fibres really be the key to better health and a longer life?
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America’s broken commonwealth
The nation’s founding myth was based on faith and solidarity – but it also contained the roots of today’s democratic…
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Gertrude Stein’s quest for fame
The modernist phenomenon believed bad attention was better than none at all.
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The Biden cover-up
The extent of the president’s decline was concealed by his desperate team. The reality was even worse than it seemed.
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From Isabel Allende to Tim Wigmore: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Cooking in the Wrong Century by Teresa Präauer and The Lost Orchid by Sarah Bilston.
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Rafael Nadal: the king of Paris
No player has dominated one Grand Slam as Nadal did the red clay of Roland Garros.
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Faith is a half-formed thing
A new generation is turning away from established churches in search of a different way to believe.
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Andrea Dworkin’s dispatches from the sex wars
In her 1981 treatise, Dworkin called porn “the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls”. Forty years later, has sex-positive…
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Britain’s small boats obsession
Overcrowded dinghies used for desperate, dangerous crossings have become totemic in our toxic immigration conversation.
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Solvej Balle’s day without end
In this Danish novel, a woman stuck in a repeating time loop is forced to consider the very fundamentals of…
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How the world stopped Hitler
The Second World War was not just won on the battlefield, but in seemingly marginal regions from Ireland to Iraq.
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