Samuel Beckett’s Proustian moment
The great Irish writer’s first book, an idiosyncratic study of Proust, was also a potent work of modernist literature
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
In Hong Kong, I saw the coming Chinese century
Is authoritarianism the price we will pay for social order?
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At last, a literary prime minister?
Andy Burnham’s English degree has shaped his worldview
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The dictatorship of the elderly
The Victorians saw how generational conflict would fester – and warp our politics beyond recognition
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Art against the machine
This AI short-story scandal is the beginning of a new era for literature
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Don’t blame AI for bad writing
Long before “The Serpent in the Grove”, the book industry had turned away from style and towards identity
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Sylvia Townsend Warner’s obscure forces
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, published a century ago, is a powerful reverie on women’s interwar status
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The highs and lows of London’s literary scene
Also: a dreamy new novel, and my relapse
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How not to read JG Ballard
This new biography has done a great writer a disservice
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Ben Lerner has taken autofiction somewhere new
The American novelist’s new book is not truly about ego, or technology, but a more elusive and universal theme
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Franz Kafka’s ten apostles
The Mitteleuropean writer owes much of his fame to the gifted translators who took his words out of German and…
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The curse of individualism
Rowan Williams’s new book reimagines solidarity for our times
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My mother’s love for words
As a child, Marie Drabble would read anything that was printed, from adverts to lists. It was a habit that…
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Len Deighton was a revolutionary
Too many of Britain’s espionage writers were melancholy public schoolboys – Deighton was their antidote
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How academics ruined Shakespeare
It is time to retrieve the playwright we thought we knew – the man who asks universal questions – from…
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The depravity of Jeffrey Epstein’s reading list
The Epstein emails are crawling with Humbert Humberts
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How Wuthering Heights seduced its readers
Nothing beats the thrills and seductions of Emily Brontë’s novel
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Hamnet fails Shakespeare
Paul Mescal’s portrayal leans more on grief than genius
By1926: How TS Eliot’s “music of ideas” saved a generation
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TS Eliot’s Hollow Men are all around us
The poem, which was published 100 years ago, has beguiled a remarkable array of minds
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