From Lisa Nandy to An Yu: recent books reviewed in short
Also featuring a biography of Peter Beard and White Torture by Narges Mohammadi.
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
The radical bookshops shaping Britain’s literary culture
Today’s indie bookshops are as influential in stirring up political and cultural life as those of the 1960s.
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Why Diego Garcia won the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize for fiction
Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams’s collaboration is a restlessly inventive novel about colonial injustice and human connection.
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Pachinko author Min Jin Lee: “I don’t want approval”
The Korean-American novelist on hate speech, cancel culture and exposing society’s unwritten codes.
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Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams: “Writers are subject to a sustained assault from the political class”
The 2022 Goldsmiths Prize-winning duo on Chagos, capitalism and collaborating on their mould-breaking novel Diego Garcia.
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What our homes reveal about ourselves
Living Rooms explores what domestic spaces say about class and belonging, from chintz to cleanfluencers.
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How #BookTok is changing literature
TikTok is having an “unprecedented” impact on publishing, but is it shaping a new wave of fiction?
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Diego Garcia is the first collaborative novel to win the Goldsmiths Prize
Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams’s politically charged novel has won the 2022 award for mould-breaking fiction.
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PJ Harvey on superstition, dialect and poetry
At a live Q&A with Frank Skinner, the musician shared her knowledge of Dorset folklore and read from her new…
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Kamila Shamsie Q&A: “Ali Smith’s books force me out of pessimism”
The author discusses her heroes, the cricketer Wasim Akram and Nelson Mandela, and her love of Wimbledon.
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From Yomi Sode to Jo van Gogh-Bonger: recent books reviewed in short
Also featuring Cleopatra’s Daughter by Jane Draycott and A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors.
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How Jacques Testard made Fitzcarraldo a prize-winning literary powerhouse
The publisher on the “arrogance” of the UK books industry and the transformative effect of three Nobel Prizes in the…
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Sara Baume: “I’m attracted to artists who find new ways to tread the same ground”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Seven Steeples on the pandemic, the death of her father and the role of…
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Yara Rodrigues Fowler: “I wanted to disorient the Anglophone reader”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel “there are more things” on revolutionary politics, Margery Kempe and cannibalising colonisers.
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Sylvia Plath’s 90th birthday party
In October, around 300 readers arrived in Hebden Bridge for the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival hoping to change perceptions of…
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Why the novel matters
Against the “imperialism of the absolute” – a personal manifesto on the art of fiction.
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Mona Arshi: “We unexpectedly stumble over memories like trip wires”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel Somebody Loves You discusses Antigone, Michaela Coel and putting language over a Bunsen…
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Helen Oyeyemi: “My favourite stories leave me looking like a shocked face emoji”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel Peaces on mongooses, Korean drama and “discipline in the pursuit of chaos”.
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The Passenger: The phantom world of Cormac McCarthy
In The Passenger, his first novel for 16 years, the great American writer offers a study of living without answers.
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I wrote a novel about the worst time in Sri Lanka’s history – but 2022 is a close rival
The Booker Prize-winning author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida on an age of political upheaval and bloodshed.
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