The best books about the Covid-19 pandemic
From modern science to literary classics, the New Statesman rounds up ten of the best pandemic reads.
ByBook reviews
Read all the latest book reviews from the New Statesman and discover the best novels, non-fiction, essays and biographies. If you’re looking for something more specific, explore our sections dedicated to politics books and history books.
The dark side of our age of fitness
What is the link between neoliberalism and working out?
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Paul Kagame: the hidden dictator
How Paul Kagame’s Rwandan regime wooed the global elite.
ByEdward St Aubyn’s Double Blind is a clumsy critique of modern science
The novel veers between jet-setting farce and musings on recent issues of Current Biology.
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Sport and the English identity
From fox hunters to football hooligans, sport is England’s way of showing what it thinks it is.
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Why Goodreads is bad for books
After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.
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Misunderstanding Margaret Thatcher
How Margaret Thatcher consolidated her power – not thanks to the Falklands War, but because of an opposition that underestimated…
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Elton John’s Me: a bracingly open and spectacularly funny autobiography
Dignity is thrillingly cast aside in this riotously entertaining book full of premium celebrity tittle-tattle.
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Yukio Mishima’s dark fantasies of imperial Japan
Before Mishima committed ritual suicide on 25 November 1970, he delivered a speech from a balcony in the garrison in…
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Britannia Unchained: the free-market book that defines Boris Johnson’s cabinet
The libertarian tract’s policies and co-authors – Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Liz Truss – are at the heart of the…
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The madness of King Henry VI
The mental illness of monarchs has been a fruitful subject for historians, but in Henry VI’s case his illness led…
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Lily Allen’s memoir is uniquely candid about the dark side of fame
Allen details countless horrors, including a stalker entering her bedroom at night, waking up as a record industry executive attempted…
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Sally Rooney on sex, power and the art of being normal
The 27-year-old Booker-nominated author, hailed as the voice of millennial fiction, discusses the success of her second novel, Normal People.
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Annie Ernaux: the objective, unseen reporter of her times
Ernaux’s The Years draws not only on her own life but on her long “communal memory”.
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Unenlightened thinking: Steven Pinker’s embarrassing new book is a feeble sermon for rattled liberals
To think of this book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s laborious…
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The story of Adam and Eve: exploring the myth of the original sinners
Stephen Greenblatt’s book is a pellucid and absorbing account of the Biblical tale’s great significance.
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Man in the mirror-ball: Simon Armitage’s The Unaccompanied
With this mature, engaging and empathetic work, the poet softens the pain of passing years.
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What do animals think of humans?
Animals are our fellow travellers on this earth. It’s time we heard what they have to say.
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Myths and monstrosities of the Holocaust
Two histories of the Holocaust reveal the what we didn’t know about the concentration camps.
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Lewis Carroll: revelations about Alice and her wonderland
New studies by Edward Wakeling and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst uncover the story of one of literature’s most debated men.
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