Ian Rankin, author I’m a huge fan of Muriel Spark, but wasn’t sure I needed another biography of her, yet James Bailey’s Like a Cat Loves a Bird was a winning blend... Read more »
Minihorror by Barbi Marković, translated by Jen Calleja (Faber, £14.99) This eccentric and fantastical collection of very short stories is bursting with weird life. Mini and Miki (the Disney mouse names in... Read more »
The Goldsmiths prize-shortlisted debut from British-Greek author Aea Varfis-van Warmelo opens with a confession: “I have never told this story before.” The narrator, who bears the author’s name, goes on to tell the... Read more »
Michael Gambon began his acting career with a preposterous bluff. Applying for a job at Dublin’s Gate theatre, the young toolmaker from the south-east London suburbs embellished his CV with entirely fabricated theatrical... Read more »
What if, battered by cancer and cancer treatment, you decided to end your life? And what if it went wrong and you lived, but a friend died in your place? Would you tell... Read more »
In his recently published A History of the Novel in Britain, Philip Hensher makes a bold claim. Historical novels, he tells us, don’t last. However popular and prestigious a historical novel might... Read more »
Are we on the brink of a new world war? This bleak subject is increasingly invoked by leaders, soldiers and officials, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to the heads of our military... Read more »
The novelist Zadie Smith has said that inequality has made culture clashes feel “existential”, adding that it has become “natural to look to your left and think ‘who the fuck are you?’”... Read more »
The literary power couple is a historically seductive concept. Two writers sharing a life, their private and creative worlds entwined, each becoming witness to and critic of the other’s work. Think Simone... Read more »