The more power the radical rightwing nationalists of our age accrue, the greater the risk that their destructive brand of politics becomes normalised. We should not, for instance, regard it as normal... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryThe deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann in Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows were etched into my being as a first grader in Chesterfield County, Virginia.... 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 »
In the spring of 2024, I am finally able to visit Banishanta, the island in southern Bangladesh that has been haunting my dreams. When I arrive I find it is little more than... Read more »
Malala YousafzaiActivistI have loved going to the theatre ever since I saw my first musical (Matilda in London, when I was 15 years old) – and I love reading about it, too.... Read more »
The New York Times has cut ties with a freelance journalist after discovering he used artificial intelligence to help write a book review that echoed elements of a review of the same... Read more »
The unnamed narrator of Black Bag, an out-of-work actor living in London, has finally landed himself a role, and it’s a doozy. Advertised on the “admirably candid” website strange-acting-jobs.org, the role demands... Read more »
There has never been a better time than now for Man, the protagonist of Helen of Nowhere, to be a neo-transcendentalist. As a university professor, the lessons he imparts involve encouraging his... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryI acquired from somewhere, in my more or less atheistic family, a Ladybird Book of the Lord’s Prayer, whose every page I can recover in all its lurid 1960s naturalism. “As... Read more »