book reviews and features
Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World ed. Zahra Hankir review – journalism from the front lines
Sunday, 11 August 2019
Many of the women in this pioneering collection of essays have faced unimaginable hardship in their pursuit of... Read more... |
The Collection: Nina Leger trans. Laura Francis - daring, direct and richly imagined
Sunday, 11 August 2019
Jeanne – employment, age and appearance unknown, motives unknowable – is building a collection of penises. In street after street, she feigns dizziness; on the inevitable approach of a man eager... Read more... |
Rachel DeLoache Williams: My Friend Anna review - a fraudster for the Instagram age?
Tuesday, 06 August 2019
Of all the ventures that super-fraudster Anna Delvey might have chosen as bait for her victims, an exclusive... Read more... |
Martin Hägglund: This Life - Why Mortality Makes Us Free review - profound book to be read slowly
Sunday, 04 August 2019
Swedish-born multi-lingual academic Martin Hägglund lives in New York and teaches philosophy and comparative literature at Yale. His new book, This Life, is a substantial examination of secular... Read more... |
Vic Marks: Original Spin review - trouble in Taunton
Sunday, 21 July 2019
In cricket, timing is everything. Played a fraction early and that silky cover drive finds a batsman out to lunch as... Read more... |
Gina Apostol: Insurrecto review – a treacherous archipelago of stories
Sunday, 14 July 2019
As in other countries born out of 19th-century uprisings against imperial power, the literary roots of the Philippines run deep. Executed by the Spanish in 1896, the novelist, poet and physician... Read more... |
CD - The Lost Words: Spell Songs
Sunday, 07 July 2019
Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever... Read more... |
Svetlana Alexievich: Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories review - anything but childish
Sunday, 30 June 2019
Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories is a collection of oral testimonies conducted between 1978-2004 with... Read more... |
Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous review – the new avant-garde
Sunday, 23 June 2019
Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is written as a letter to his mother, who cannot read. She cannot read because... Read more... |
Cate Haste: Passionate Spirit - The Life of Alma Mahler review - a racy life pacily narrated
Sunday, 16 June 2019
Charismatic, full of vital elan to the end, inconsistent, fitfully creative, a casually anti-semitic Conservative Catholic married to two of the greatest Jewish artists, Alma Mahler/Gropius/Werfel... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...
Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...
It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...