Hints and tips:
...Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (Virago/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)A “radiant, thrilling interpretation” as a work of great literature by one of America’s leading novelists and thinkers....
...(Puig is name-checked in the book, alongside other gay writers including Edward Albee, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams.)...
...August Blue by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) A virtuoso pianist named Elsa M Anderson skitters around Europe — shadowed all the while by her mysterious doppelgänger — after a...
...The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate/Bloomsbury) In 1921, the writer William Somerset Maugham made the first of two trips to British Malaya, collecting ideas for short stories as he went....
...The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle (Allen Lane/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Carlisle’s magisterial biography explores the many facets of George Eliot’s radical life and work...
...All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaediaby Simon Garfield, Weidenfeld & Nicolson £18.99/William Morrow $29.99 February 28, 2023 Simon Garfield, author of quirky histories...
...Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas, Virago £25/Farrar Straus & Giroux $35, 576 pages...
...The Book of Gooseby Yiyun Li, Fourth Estate £16.99/Farrar, Straus & Giroux $28 Inspired by the true (and curiously little-known) story of Berthe Grimault, a 1950s girl from rural France who found fame as...
...The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate)Eleven years after The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng is back with a fictionalised account of William Somerset Maugham’s visit to Penang in 1921....
...His mother was a descendant of William Samuel Johnson, a signer of the US Constitution....
...As before, Oh William! offers exquisite characterisation within a rich, tapestry narrative....
...A brain tumour, an unplanned pregnancy, a naive Franciscan abbot, a Richard Dawkins stand-in named Sir William Moorhead (author of a book titled Why the Sublime is Ridiculous) and Kraftwerk are thrown into...
...In Francis Bacon (William Collins, January), Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan claim the first “fully comprehensive” — it’s certainly a hefty tome — biography of the celebrated artist....
...Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, by Catherine Belton, William Collins, RRP£25/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, RRP$35, 640 pages An exhaustively researched and entertaining...
...Agency William Gibson, Viking, RRP£18.99 The veteran science-fiction writer, credited with inventing the term “cyberspace”, conjures up another phantasmagoric novel set in a post-apocalyptic 22nd-century...
...Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Turned on the West Catherine Belton, William Collins, RRP£25/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, RRP$35 An exhaustively researched and extremely readable account...
...Food writer William Sitwell’s The Restaurant is a history of eating out spanning two millennia (Simon & Schuster RRP£20, April)....
...The Story of Silver: How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World, by William L Silber, Princeton University Press, RRP£24/$29.95 Silber’s book is mostly about silver in America, rather than...
...I also loved The Anarchy (Bloomsbury, RRP£30), William Dalrymple’s splendid history of the East India Company. A timely tale of corporate greed and brutality....
...Certain American States , by Catherine Lacey, Granta, RRP£12.99/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, RRP$26 We’re talking states of mind, rather than federal states here....
...Brexit has also acted as “an anchor”, says Hodder-Williams....
...Appiah’s mother, an Anglican, once told William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, that she had trouble believing one of the 39 Articles that define the Anglican faith....
...Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, by Peter Godfrey-Smith, William Collins, RRP£20/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, RRP$27, 272 pages From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution...
...Young Eliot: From St Louis to The Waste Land, by Robert Crawford, Jonathan Cape, RRP£25/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, RRP$35 Crawford’s exhaustive biography of TS Eliot’s early years anatomises the poet’s early...
...Landfalls, by Naomi Williams, Little, Brown RRP£14.99/Farrar, Straus & Giroux RRP$26, 336 pages...
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