Kit de Waal’s second novel, The Trick to Time, begins with Mona, a sixty-year-old Irish immigrant, standing by her window in the middle of the night. She notices a man in the building across from her ...

Film directors usually make the least promising subjects for biography. They tend to stay behind the camera and get on with making films, emerging only to make the odd promotional statement. Only ...

There is, plainly, no logic in the unfolding of time.’ Pankaj Mishra makes this sceptical observation in order to undermine the theories of history that have inspired Western thinkers and leaders over ...

Although Sylvia Plath is admired by many literary scholars and even adored by some passionate readers, critics have not been unanimous in their assessment of her art. Irving Howe declared in 1972 that ...

One of the most important facts about Michel Houellebecq – usually overlooked in favour of his nihilism, alleged racism and other attention-seeking provocations – is that he is a first-rate prose ...

This large book is both rewarding and demanding. It offers information in abundance and, like Sir Barry Cunliffe’s previous publications from OUP, it is beautifully written and illustrated. But what ...

A favourite pastime with a certain species of cultivated New Yorker – ‘obsession’ is probably a more correct word – is that of referring to well-known figures by their first names so as to ensure that ...

It is odd to read a novel one simultaneously admires and loathes. The admiration is for the book’s intelligence, lack of sentimentality and often extraordinary phrase-making: the loathing is for the ...

A C Grayling has carved out a niche not only as a lucid and accessible interpreter of philosophy for the general reader but also as a passionate advocate for the role that it can and should play in ...

I don’t mean to disqualify myself as a reviewer, but I can't quite figure this book, or its author out. Arkady Shevchenko is by one calculus the most senior Soviet official ever to have made the leap ...

Ugwu is a teenager from a village in Nigeria who goes to work as a houseboy for a university lecturer, Odenigbo. His aunt tells him that if he works hard, he will eat well. ‘You will even eat meat ...

A troubled craftsman from a port city near Antioch joins a subversive group and begins a new life centred on his faith. He travels to market towns and villages, preaching and collecting funds to ...