The Newer World by Sebastian Barry: Giving voice to slavery and its aftermath
The protagonist Tennyson is a beautiful literary creation, but has he been refused his own agency?
Book Reviews
Compelling and unsettling: The Last Years of Edna O’Brien by her son Carlo Gébler
The memoir powerfully evokes O’Brien’s rage against ‘hideous’ dying
Fiction in translation: Hafni Says by Danish writer Helle Helle is close to perfection
Plus new works by Pirkko Saisio, Felix Hartlaub, Karim Kattan and Angélica Gorodischer
Anita Brookner: Art & Life by Hermione Lee – A loving, careful and worthwhile biography of an evasive life
Is this biography so much about the books because there’s little to say about the life?
Agrippa by Robert Harris: Augustus’s best friend tells all in his fictional memoir
The master of historical fiction reveals why Marcus Agrippa was so devoted to his friend’s grand design for ancient Rome
Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers – A bleak but revelatory dispatch
A blend of history, travelogue and geopolitical analysis that traces the faultlines of a 21st-century cold war
The Bridge by Colm Tóibín: A painful chronicle of relationships in collapse
In his latest work to be set in Catalonia, Tóibín’s men pour their deepest tenderness into their animals while their human connections fail
Switzy by Emma Cline: A remarkable act of imagination and empathy
Novel beautifully humanises dementia and the often-polarising debate about assisted dying
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore: Courageous book offers visceral wake-up calls
Author charts dire consequences of our machine age, then takes an inspired turn to literature to reawaken us to a deeper reality
The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet: Great gossipy nuggets about Barbara Cartland
The author makes excellent use of unprecedented access to the late romance novelist’s vast archives
Children’s books: Boredom busters
A selection for young readers from Michelle Beech, Hollie Hughes, Laura Dockrill, Jarvis and Judge, Becky Baines and Jane Wilsher
The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands – A voyage of discovery
‘A magnificent farrago of best guesses, classical locations, biblical myth and not a lot of sea’
Prophets, Profits, Coaches and Kings by Jared Diamond: How many leaders pass the Hamlet test?
An interesting and entertaining treatise from the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel
The Disappearers by Marlon James: A horrifying and exhilarating portrayal of men queer and straight
James is honest and generous in his shifting perspectives on an attack on eight gay men in Jamaica
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan: Important and funny but it doesn’t quite land
The female protagonist, Dilara, feels like a bodiless mouthpiece being used to tell the story of Erdogan’s Turkey
Setting the Land Free: Visions of a Rewilded Ireland – an urgent manifesto for living with nature
In his follow-up to An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, Eoghan Daltun shows how policy shifts in land managment could work in practice across Ireland
A stunning novel by T Geronimo Johnson is among this month’s best new crime fiction
The Occidental Book of the Dead reads like what you might get if Ishmael Reed and Walter Mosley had scripted Chinatown
Reviews in brief: Fledgling and Exhibition
Josh Holton delivers an impressive autofictional debut; Alex Hyde creates a portrait of two very different artists
Changing Gender by Susan Stryker: A work of extraordinary energy, hope and emotional force
Through the seemingly dry framework of grammar, the author takes us on an intellectually stunning and thrillingly alive journey
Death Do Us by Ruthy Mason: An engaging if uneven story
A debut novel that attempts to nail marriage and the commercial wedding industry as a suffocating experience for women
For the Dead Remember: The Life of MR James by Darryl Jones – Horror upon horror, from public school to the page
It’s difficult to imagine a better account of the deeply repressed Eton provost and horror writer’s life ever being written, writes John Connolly
Paul Celan: A Life: magisterial biography makes for essential reading
Anna Arno examines the life and work of the man who wrote some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century
Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason: A beguiling novel that is so much more than the sum of its parts
What begins as a lightly satirical account of the publishing world evolves in profound ways
Choosing the Struggle by Martina Anderson: A fascinating, shocking and frank narrative on her work as a politician
However, the former Sinn Féin MEP and MLA’s autobiography reveals little about the other parts of her life and feels incomplete as a result
Castles, conspiracies and communism: thought-provoking back-to-school YA reads
Oran Doyle’s compelling debut Give Me ’Til Midnight is a refreshing take on the now-familiar time-loop plot
Life of M by Rachel Cusk: A mesmeric and vampiric relationship with not-Natalie Portman
This strange beast projects Cusk’s tortured authorial persona on to a woman seen everywhere
Cambridge Companion to Martin Amis: Book underscores unresolved difficulty of placement in the literary canon
If endurance is the only true test of literary quality, then the jury is still out
The Most Normal Woman: Essays on Appearances – sharp, funny and unsettling
The author is a witty, intelligent and perceptive guide to the increasingly grotesque work of having a self in public
Betrayal by Luke Harding: A colourful, entertaining take on Trump, Russia and Ukraine
Interviews with ordinary Ukrainians light up this book’s pages, although it contains a strange fascination with ornithological detail
Timor Mortis: How We Live with Death. A clarification of what truly matters
Richard Coker makes a persuasive case for us to live our lives in a way that aligns with what will survive us in the end
The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis: An eerie moodscape built through story
The author is toying with us and our contemporary desire for total knowability
A Nation Once Again by Paul Howard: Funny and scabrous novel is a propulsive caper
How does a writer include so much detail, and so many sensitive issues, without making something everyone will hate?
About to Fall Apart by Ashley Hickson-Lovence: A hilarious meditation on writing and family
The reader emerges from this novel slightly hungover and somewhat hopeful
Ghost Month by Simon Wroe: Odd, thoughtful inquiry into possibility of living alongside loss
Author renders this fantastical concept with remarkable conviction and wit
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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