You might think, with the completion of the Human Genome Project 20 years ago now, and the discovery of the double helix enjoying its 70th birthday this year, that we actually know how... Read more »
“When you travel as a girl, you don’t learn anything about the world. All you learn is that there’s a way of looking at the world that doesn’t belong to you,” says twentysomething... Read more »
The Irish writer Cathy Sweeney’s short fiction has been widely praised, her prose likened to that of Samuel Beckett and Lydia Davis. Her blistering debut novel, Breakdown, displays an impressive economy of... Read more »
The term “quarterlife” was coined more than two decades ago by Abby Wilner, co-author (with Alexandra Robbins) of Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. Although psychotherapist Satya Doyle... Read more »
The Delivery by Margarita García Robaya, translated by Megan McDowell (Charco, £11.99)A young Colombian woman living in Argentina is estranged from her family but still in touch with her sister, who sends... Read more »
In 1946 a young atmospheric scientist named Bernard Vonnegut made a significant discovery. It had already been shown that clouds could be made to produce snow or rain by “seeding” them with... Read more »
On the front cover of the South African writer Magogodi oaMphela Makhene’s impressive debut collection of linked stories about life under and after apartheid, a young Black girl, primly attired in a... Read more »
In a lifetime of writing, Alexis Wright became aware of “how other people were telling stories on behalf of Aboriginal people in Australia”. A national narrative manipulated by the most powerful, she... Read more »
Why do we read historical fiction? Is it because we love the brutal simplicity of our past? If so, the opening chapter of Tim Pears’s novel is all you could want –... Read more »