When Keir Starmer won a landslide Labour majority promising to pursue five governing “missions”, the high-profile leftwing economist Mariana Mazzucato was credited as an inspiration. Two years on, her bracing new book... Read more »
= Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio (Picador, £16.99)Kawakami’s latest opens with a bang, as narrator Hana learns that her old friend Kimiko has been... Read more »
The premise of Séamas O’Reilly’s brilliant debut novel is that a Hollywood actor has flown into Derry to star in a new TV series about the Troubles called Dead City, then mysteriously... Read more »
The Book of Birds delivers a stark warning in its introduction about the “great thinning of the skies … Dawns and springs are quieter; the air emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is... Read more »
We can all agree that the internet today, especially two particular platforms owned by the world’s greatest megalomaniacs, is a hellscape. But if you think X and Facebook are purgatories of friendless... Read more »
As anyone who has procreated this century knows, childrearing involves daily rounds of online searching. The most common parenting-related queries feature in What We Ask Google, a valiant attempt by the search... Read more »
Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey in 2017 and the Iliad in 2023 are now the standard English-language versions, acclaimed for their conciseness and fluency. Her infatuation with Homer began at the... Read more »
Missouri Williams’s darkly absurd and wilfully grotesque debut novel, The Doloriad, concerned itself with the aftermath of a world-shattering catastrophe. Her second takes place in what feels like the beginning of one.... Read more »
According to the evolutionary psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams, almost everyone gets sex wrong. Traditionalists tend to exaggerate the natural differences between men and women. Progressives tend to minimise them, and to assume that... Read more »