M is a celebrated film actor. A star since childhood, now the face of a major fashion brand, she has been famous all her life. That her career closely resembles Natalie Portman’s has... Read more »
The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio, translated by Mia Spangenberg, Penguin Classics (£14.99)Following Lowest Common Denominator and Backlight, this book completes Finnish author Saisio’s autofictional trilogy. It covers her young... Read more »
Something is happening to literary time. In the last fortnight I’ve read new or forthcoming novels about a mirror universe where history runs backwards (The Understory, Chloe Benjamin), an agency that offers... Read more »
If you’re one of those people who thinks about the Roman empire several times a week, Robert Harris has you covered. He follows his trilogy of novels about the life of Cicero and... Read more »
Earlier this summer, I travelled through Europe on a book tour. Everywhere I went, the heat broke records. In Italy, Germany and Spain, I sought refuge from the afternoon sun in air-conditioned hotels.... Read more »
A novel about rewilding and climate activism in Britain has been named this year’s winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction. When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift... Read more »
Frazer and Caitlin have been emotionally entwined since schooldays. Now in their mid-20s, and parents of a five-year-old, they live in a grotty flat in a Scottish new town – the faded... Read more »
Every summer, we long for a much-needed break from daily life, dreaming of self-reinvention in some distant paradise. But really, holidays can be absolute hell. Instead of relaxation we encounter heaving crowds,... Read more »
‘But after all, writing is nothing more than a guided dream,” wrote Jorge Luis Borges. Dreams and dreaming are fertile concerns for Rosalind Belben, too. Her fourth book, originally published in 1979... Read more »