The Policy Ask with Daniel Gorman: “We are in a human rights emergency”
The director of English PEN on the erosion of civil liberties, protecting free speech and calling for a ceasefire.
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.
On being the writer in the family
Writers exploit and rebel against their parents – but can never escape them.
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Notes on trying
For readers and writers, novels require enormous effort. Why do we persist in seeking meaning in their pages?
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The hypocrisy of Rishi’s Right
Also this week: the power of the Nativity, and why books are like batteries.
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Paul Lynch: “Nothing kills a book quicker than a writer with a message”
The Booker Prize-winning author on political fiction, the refugee crisis and the “unmistakable” timeliness of his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
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The dark prophet of our times
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky dares to ask the question few will: do people truly desire freedom?
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Books of the year 2023
New Statesman writers and guests choose their favourite reading of the year.
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The Booker Prize is becoming irrelevant
The judging panel hasn’t picked an exciting winner in years because there simply hasn’t been one.
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AS Byatt’s hard truths
The novelist, who died last week aged 87, clung fast to realism during a time of faddish post-structuralists.
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Clemens Meyer’s lessons from history
The author on growing up in the GDR, the rise of the far-right and Germany’s “responsibility” for the conflict in…
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The calm of the sleeper train
Also this week: Samuel Beckett’s advice, and the mysteries of time and loss.
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The secrets of Shakespeare’s “stupid”, “grotesque” portrait
The infamous “pudding-faced” Droeshout portrait is widely agreed to be hideous and embarrassing. Is there more to it than meets…
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Why we chose Benjamin Myers’s Cuddy as the Goldsmiths Prize winner
The time-travelling story about faith, nationhood and the north upends preconceptions of the “historical novel”.
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Benjamin Myers wins the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize for “virtuosic” novel Cuddy
The award for “mould-breaking” fiction goes to a millennia-spanning epic about St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
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Amy Arnold: “We’re unaccustomed to being pushed up against the inner life of another person”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Lori & Joe on walking, suspense and capturing consciousness in prose.
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Adam Thirlwell: “Everyone has become a kind of manic everyday literary critic”
The Goldsmiths-shortlisted author on aliens, revolutionary France and our era of misinformation.
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How John le Carré infiltrated Oxford
When the author was a spy the university was his battlefield.
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H Gareth Gavin: “I’m more interested in stubbornness than in hope”
The Goldsmiths-shortlisted author of Never Was on transness as “a tussle with history”.
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Karl Ove Knausgaard’s thought experiment
The Norwegian novelist doesn’t just want to show his characters’ inner lives, he wants us to take leave of our…
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Kate Briggs: “I took a philosophical vocabulary and offered it to a baby”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted The Long Form on “patchwork” novels, and why childcare is a political act.
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