Why we need Arundhati Roy
It is vanishingly rare for a writer to both confront the ugliness of humanity and still search for its beauty.…
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Lara Pawson: “I like to write with rules. It pushes my mind into strange places”
The Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author on making art from objects, and what civil wars taught her about human nature.
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Jilly Cooper’s very English fantasies
Her novels are so absurd they are rarely analysed. Can they tell us anything about Britain and class?
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The making of Barbara Kingsolver
In Holding the Line, the author’s newly republished account of the 1983 Arizona miners’ strike, the novelist and the reporter…
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Richard Dawkins, the gene genie
The great scientist strays into speculation in The Genetic Book of the Dead, his latest defence of his “selfish gene”…
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Myths of the great statesmen
New studies of Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson show the rewards and perils of political biography.
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The resurrection of John le Carré
In Karla’s Choice the late spy novelist’s son Nick Harkaway has revived George Smiley – but he cannot match the…
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The best of the academic presses for autumn 2024
The New Statesman’s highlights, from Greek mythology to 1980s pop-synth and drawing to Christian nationalism
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