Houman Barekat

Contributor

Houman Barekat, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a writer and critic and founding editor of the journal Review 31

Knife by Salman Rushdie review: living to tell the tale of being saved by love

Knife is surprisingly upbeat for a book about being stabbed in the head

A People’s History of Football by Mickaël Correia: Making the case for the sport as a progressive social force

This an enjoyable highlights reel of stores from From Barcelona to Brazil that show why football has a special legitimacy as the people’s game

Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan: comic writer to culture warrior

This book of two distinct parts is a discomfitting read because the author clearly hasn’t worked through his issues

The New York Times went to see Andrew Scott’s one-man Chekhov play. This is its verdict

Theatre: What artistic benefit is derived from having a single actor play all the parts?

The Hour After Happy Hour by Mary O’Donoghue: stories about Irish emigrant lives and those left behind

A playful enjoyment in words and language permeates this collection

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt: A compelling storyteller but an uncompelling protagonist

The wife of the unassuming, forgettable Bob leaves him for his best friend. And who could blame her?

Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong: admirably ambitious for a debut novel

Author’s first work of long-form fiction follows her 2022 short story collection, How to Gut a Fish

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery: coming-of-age tale of Warhol Factory girl

There is little of the freewheeling playfulness that animated the author’s impressive 2019 short story collection, Show Them a Good Time

The Call of the Tribe by Mario Vargas Llosa: A solid political primer but lacking in fresh ideas

Author writes chapters on liberal thinkers from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek but his fear of tyranny has blinded him to the benefits of state intervention

Run and Hide: psychodrama of social mobility

Book review: Pankaj Mishra on the slippery subject of class in vivid portraits of three Indian men

A Time Outside This Time: Anxious meditation on ‘fake news’ is deeply unoriginal

Book review: Amitava Kumar’s novel strains a bit too hard to speak to the moment

Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell: Bric-a-brac of ordinary life

Book review: These neatly crafted short stories find poetry in the rituals of domesticity

Cleanness: Moral fastidiousness and S&M in city of Sofia

Garth Greenwell’s explicit novel of interpersonal chemistry and homosexuality engages

Winter Papers: a potent antidote to the season’s blues

Anthology review: Eclectic collection of work evokes comforting sense of ongoingness and shared humanity

The Man in the Red Coat: Julian Barnes calls out the ‘deluded, masochistic’ Brexit project

Review: Non-fiction book revisits the belle époque through the life of one of its colourful celebrities