Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono review – sex lives of the quietly kinky | Short stories
[ad_1] This unignorably strange collection of stories evokes warring responses of admiration and disgust in the reader: Taeko Kono is a writer who puts the toxic into intoxicating. The selection, written between 1961 and 1971, is a brave choice for one of the launch titles in W&N’s new list of modern classics. (Though the publisher […]
Mateo Askaripour: ‘Everything is sales, whether we call it that or not’ | Fiction
[ad_1] Mateo Askaripour’s bookshelves are a mess of plants and cameras with dangling straps and books crammed in tightly. Prominently placed, parallel to the 29-year-old author’s left ear within clear view of the camera, is his debut novel, Black Buck. “At first I didn’t have it so prominently,” Askaripour says via a Zoom call from […]
Diamond Hill by Kit Fan review – pre-handover Hong Kong noir | Fiction
[ad_1] “It had been two years since I set foot in Hong Kong, and it already looked a different beast,” remarks Buddha, the laconic narrator of Kit Fan’s gripping and highly accomplished debut novel. With its themes of powerlessness, upheaval, colonialism and displacement, Diamond Hill feels especially timely in light of Hong Kong’s ongoing pro-democracy […]
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen review – an excess of genius? | Fiction
[ad_1] The first obligation, when turning to the work of the electrifying American writer Joshua Cohen, is to stress that he clearly is a genius. In his essays (Attention!) and stories (Four New Messages), and in novels such as Witz, Book of Numbers, Moving Kings and now The Netanyahus – a comic historical fantasia – […]
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere review – a brilliantly entertaining debut | Fiction
[ad_1] “Yes, all writers go through a Thomas Bernhard phase, sooner or later,” said Geoff Dyer. His authority was offhand but absolute, like the pope telling you where to get the best cannoli. This was years back. We were on the train to Manchester, heading for a reading event in a huge nightclub – attended […]
Final John le Carré novel, Silverview, to be published in October | John le Carré
[ad_1] Silverview, a final full-length novel by John le Carré, in which the late author delves into “the soul of the modern Secret Intelligence Service”, will be published this October. Le Carré, the author of seminal thrillers including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, died in December aged […]
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon review – an electrifying gothic techno-thriller | Fiction
[ad_1] In US author Rivers Solomon’s previous two novels, themes of memory and repression shaped stirring sci-fi narratives. Now comes Sorrowland, a gothic techno-thriller in which the trauma of the past is parried with defiance and a thirst for understanding, as embodied by an electrifying young hero. Vern is 15 years old and heavily pregnant […]
Out of office: how the pandemic is rewriting the workplace novel | Books
[ad_1] What has become of the office? Its small, mundane daily rituals, its smells – of over-boiled coffee, synthetic fabrics, other people’s perfume – the low hum of phone conversations and the whirring of the printer. To those of us who are still working from home, it feels like a faraway place, a half-forgotten memory, […]
Brit Bennett: ‘Trump colonised our brains for years. Suddenly he’s just gone? It feels surreal’ | Fiction
[ad_1] There was a rule to which Brit Bennett adhered during the writing of her novel The Vanishing Half. It is a sprawling blockbuster that opens in a small town in Louisiana in 1954 and unspools almost to the present day. It takes twin girls, Desiree and Stella, and through their divergent fortunes tells a […]
How women conquered the world of fiction | Books
[ad_1] In March, Vintage, one of the UK’s largest literary fiction divisions, announced the five debut novelists it would be championing this year: Megan Nolan, Pip Williams, Ailsa McFarlane, Jo Hamya and Vera Kurian. All five of them are women. But you could be forgiven for not noticing it, so commonplace are female-dominated lists in […]
