Brave Answers
A new collection casts further light on the clergyman-poet RS Thomas and his two great subjects, God and Wales
The Hunger Angel
Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller looked with the eyes of the victim on the political masters of terror and called it by its name.
One Book, Two Cities
James Plunkett’s classic novel reminds us of a society in which the poorest lived in the most appalling and hopeless conditions and the middle and upper classes were barely conscious of their existence.
Hopkins’s Wound
Gerard Manley Hopkins was careless of the fate of his poems, treated his muse like a slut and her children as an unwanted and vaguely sinful burden.
And Another Thing
The most recent translation of WG Sebald’s work offers the expected pleasure of his engaging prose style and an introduction to the world of some intriguing German writers.
Sacred Egoist
The Italian critic and editor Roberto Calasso enjoys a considerable reputation among the literary-critical elite, but how much substance or originality is there in his anti-rational musings?
Neither Here Nor There
Sherman Alexie writes of the lives of Washington state’s native Americans, who frequently do not feel quite at home either in Seattle or in the Indian reservations where many of them have roots.
Made in China
Dave Eggers’s beautifully written new novel offers a melancholy and dreamlike portrait of America in decline.
Weimar Stories
The German-Dutch writer Hans Keilson reached a new English-speaking audience when his novels from the 1930s were reissued. This rediscovery came when Keilson was 100.