There’s a common greeting in the Outer Hebrides: the lineage-establishing “Who do you belong to?” By the time this question is posed to 22-year-old gay Harris islander John-Calum Macleod, or Cal, in... Read more »
Israel’s attack on Iran is only the most recent example of its degeneration in recent decades, coming on top of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,... Read more »
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (Gollancz, £22)On a gigantic spaceship halfway through its 400-year voyage to a new world, hundreds of Earth colonists are kept in frozen stasis by... Read more »
It is 1483 and 10-year-old John Collan is living on a farm outside Oxford with his father, Will, and waging war on an aggressive goat that keeps trampling him. His mother is... Read more »
Solace House by Will Maclean review – immensely fun gothic horror with a psychedelic twist | Fiction
“Man,” says one of Will Maclean’s characters on catching sight for the first time of the titular Solace House. “Gothic always tries too hard.” Here, perhaps, is a self-deprecating wink in a... Read more »
Without meaning any disrespect to the now defunct noughties R&B trio Mis-Teeq, one would be hard pressed to think of many novels that open with an epigraph from their oeuvre. “You know... Read more »
Sitting stoned on a hill above his village, a young man muses on his place in the world. Connor is proud to have fenced pastures while his mates have been away at... Read more »
Iran and the Revolution by Homa Katouzian review – how the Islamic Republic was born | History books
As Wordsworth found in Paris after 1789, revolutions are deeply enthralling. There is nothing so bold, so self-sacrificing, so brave, so cruel as a revolutionary crowd. What’s more, revolutions have shaped the modern world.... Read more »
Realism, contrary to appearances, isn’t a form closed off to horror. The stories in ’Pemi Aguda’s debut collection, Ghostroots, a finalist for the 2024 US National Book award, rivetingly bore out this... Read more »