Writers

Culture
Journey into fear: Denis Johnson's violent vision of Africa is hollow - and false
The Laughing Monsters has no tension - this is a sour, overwrought novel which fills a continent with cheap laughs and cardboard villians.

By Randy Boyagoda
12 March
Culture
Gangster’s paradise: A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James’s novel about an assassination attempt on Bob Marley is more true for being fiction.

By Randy Boyagoda
15 January
Culture
Strange, stark and sentimental: Haruki Murakami’s winning fictional formula
Although it won’t finally rank among his most accomplished works Murakami’s new novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, will be happily consumed by his fervent readers.

By Randy Boyagoda
18 August
Culture
Thought crimes: inside the consciousness of a damaged, damaging man
In Andrew’s Brain by E L Doctorow, the historical and the grand meld with the ordinary and affecting in a story that also features “an international dealer in Munchkins”.
By Randy Boyagoda
20 February

NewStatesman