The word “hotel” is cognate with “hostel” and “hospital”, and for a few short years in the middle of the 20th century, one Paris establishment functioned as all three. Hôtel Lutetia sits... Read more »
Roger Casement had a life that defies categorisation: an imperial administrator who exposed imperial atrocities; a one-time diplomat for the United Kingdom who enlisted German help in Ireland’s fight for freedom; a... Read more »
In Isabel Waidner’s previous novel, 2023’s Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, a working-class writer wins a literary prize. As the trophy takes the form of an elusive UFO, Corey Fah – an... Read more »
Every November, leading figures of French literature gather in the upstairs room of an old-fashioned Paris restaurant and decide on the best novel of the year. The ceremony is staid, traditional, down... Read more »
‘A white man’s war, a Black man’s fight’: the eye-opening story of Black soldiers in Vietnam | Books
Wil Haygood’s new book, his 10th, is The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. Meeting in Washington DC to discuss it, he produces from between the... Read more »
The Gruffalo family is to expand after the publisher of the popular children’s stories announced a long-awaited third book about the beloved monster. The new tale, Gruffalo Granny, will be published on... Read more »
In Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair, Cora, a millennial mother, craves a bygone kind of passion from a bygone kind of man. Unfortunately for her, morality in 2015 is rigid and... Read more »
If you ask any Iranian to name the most important female pop star in our country’s history, they’ll say Googoosh. Nobody else comes close. Over six decades of revolution, suppression and exile, Googoosh has... Read more »
I love giving books as presents. I rarely give anything else. I strongly approve of the Icelandic tradition of the Jólabókaflóðið (Yule book flood), whereby books are given (and, crucially, read) on... Read more »