Books
- Philip Short’s meticulous new biography forces us to look at Vladimir Putin’s most appalling acts from a Russian perspective
What to read
- From Ukrainian history to Putin’s kleptocracy and Gogol’s stories, author and former Russia correspondent Oliver Bullough chooses the best titles
- Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from new editions of classic Marvel comics to great novels for the summer
- Striking biographies by Serhii Rudenko and Philip Short pit Ukraine’s comic actor turned wartime hero against Russia’s pragmatic, inscrutable insider
- This powerful tell-all from the Kinks guitarist puts the spotlight on his own bad behaviour, dalliances with the occult and his recovery from a stroke
- From overdressed hares to furious falcons … an impassioned study of wildlife under threat that still manages to inspire hope
- From The Simpsons to QAnon via The Stepford Wives, the psychoanalyst’s absorbing study of mind control is part media studies, part political history
- This International Booker-winning story of a woman who travels to Pakistan at the age of 80 to reclaim her true identity is a breath of fresh air
- A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man’s twilight years and the twilight of America
- This thoughtful follow-up is a clever echo of Burton’s debut, tracing a woman’s coming of age in early 18th-century Amsterdam
- Wood’s unnerving fourth novel follows young siblings from borstal to living on a farm in 50s England
- A secret day out at the seaside; a celebration of wildflowers; dinosaurs, spies and children with superpowers
- A call to embrace wildness, a guide to shells, a tall tree tale, wishing candles, paper spirits, and a tough apology to make
- The novelist on learning farming from his grandfather, how his background in law informed his work, and why homophobia is a Victorian export
- Voices of everyday things fill The Book of Form and Emptiness, rooted in how she experienced the loss of her father
- The award-winning author on the urgency she felt when writing her pandemic novel, how she relates to Sarah Connor from The Terminator and what Egon Schiele’s paintings make her feel
- The French-Algerian author on teenage fame, the parallels between her and Zinedine Zidane, and why she admires Bernardine Evaristo
- The novelists discuss using real life in fiction, email style, and the art of writing sex scenes
- The Albanian author and academic on what she misses most about her homeland and how a communist childhood steeped in lies sparked her interest in philosophy
Regulars
- Context is crucial, but does that really mean we can leave free will out of the picture?
You may have missed
- Sonnet for Anne Frank reflects on the ‘awful paradox between the living spirit of the diary and then the knowledge that you have’
- At the national diary archive in Pieve Santo Stefano, Tuscany, no journal is ever turned away – whether typed, scrawled or written on a bedsheet
- Author Laura Kay is part of a new wave of authors releasing uplifting queer literature that casts its characters as the heroes of their lives – not the victims
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