How not to drown
Growing up as a fish out of water.
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.
Virginia Woolf’s living book
The writer’s diaries reveal a mind striving to capture the elusive moment.
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A TikTok publishing house is bad news for books
Do we really want our literary landscape to be overrun with romance novels, trashy thrillers and scientifically dubious self-help?
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What is Annie Ernaux hiding?
What the Nobel Laureate teaches us about shame, confession and secrecy.
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From Ferdinand Mount to Isabel Waidner: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan and Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder.
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Joyce Carol Oates, online and off
The novelist reflects on Twitter, autofiction and our lack of a “sense of history”.
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Lorrie Moore’s American afterlife
Moore’s new novel is an absurd, profound treatise on death and grief that only stumbles when it reaches for a…
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Goodreads is degrading our literary culture
Everyone can, and should, be a critic. But the reviews website is having a sinister effect on books.
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Why literary snobs don’t get Bridget Jones
Moralising critics forget the importance of fiction holding up a mirror to society’s flaws.
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From Leïla Slimani to Laura Cumming: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Penance by Eliza Clark and White Hot by Matt Roller and Tim Wigmore.
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Death and literature in Ukraine
Kyiv’s thriving literary scene was marred by the death of the novelist Victoria Amelina.
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Lucinda Williams: “Poor women? After a while that becomes ridiculous”
The songwriter on her stroke, country vs rock, and why she hates “feminists in music using the fact that they’re…
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What Cormac McCarthy knew
The American novelist understood the bleak truth that the world defies human understanding or control.
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Eat, Pray, Surrender
How Elizabeth Gilbert gave up on literature.
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The high plain style of Cormac McCarthy
The late American novelist wrote with a strange and streamlined grandeur, and sounded like nobody else.
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Cormac McCarthy’s existential Westerns
In his career-defining Border Trilogy, the late novelist summoned the ghosts of America’s bloody history.
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Annie Ernaux’s acts of revenge
The Nobel laureate on abortion, the “shame” of her upbringing and forging a new working-class literature.
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Martin who?
Not everyone is convinced of Martin Amis’s genius.
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What Martin Amis taught me
The novelist had no reason to welcome me into his home – but generosity was the thread that connected his…
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The special relationship: Martin Amis and the New Statesman
How the late novelist’s time at the magazine in the 1970s helped develop his style and voice.
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