Reviews

The Merry Misogynist, By Colin Cotterill

Magical mystic is a cut above

Inside Reviews

Truth or Fiction, By Jennifer Johnston

Monday, 7 December 2009

Writer's life has mystery appeal

Sport Book of the Week: Confessions of a Rugby Mercenary by John Daniell

Sunday, 6 December 2009

A Kiwi good enough to play for New Zealand Under-21s, John Daniell moved via a degree in English Literature at Oxford University to play top-flight rugby union in France for 11 years from 1996, selling himself to the highest bidder.

The Economics of Innocent Fraud, By John Kenneth Galbraith (Rated 4/ 5 )

Sunday, 6 December 2009

There's quite a lot of fun to be had in mapping our current economic woes on to John Kenneth Galbraith's interpretations and criticisms of capitalism, first published in 2004.

The Passport, By Herta M�ller (Rated 5/ 5 )

Sunday, 6 December 2009

Herta M�ller provides a masterclass here in sparse, clear prose, and conveys the bleakness of humanity, with the occasional touch of dark, bitter magic – fully earning her Nobel Prize for literature this year.

Last Steps: The Last Writings of Leo Tolstoy, trs Jay Parini (Rated 2/ 5 )

Sunday, 6 December 2009

It's either a brave man or a foolish man who describes feeling "an insuperable repulsion and tedium" on reading the plays of Shakespeare; the "vulgarity" of some characters; and the "inflated characterless style in which King Lear – like all Shakespeare's kings – talks". But by this point in his life, Tolstoy had eschewed his wilder, younger days to embrace religion and morality in his old age, and Shakespeare, he had decided, wasn't moral enough for him to appreciate. That is not to say he embraced the established Church – that gets it in the neck too, for forgetting its link to ordinary men.

A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World?, By Simon Schama (Rated 5/ 5 )

Sunday, 6 December 2009

First published to accompany his 2000 TV series of the same name, this initial volume in a trilogy about the history of Britain confirms Simon Schama's status as one of the world's leading historians, not only thanks to his expansive knowledge of history, but also to his ability to succinctly and unerringly pinpoint the psychological motivations of his characters.

The Right Hand of the Sun: A Novel, By Anita Mason (Rated 3/ 5 )

Sunday, 6 December 2009

I'm never quite sure whether that subtitle, "A Novel", is meant to function as qualifier, explanation or apology. In this case, perhaps, Anita Mason was worried we might take her historical account of Spain's bloody and brutal empire-building at the beginning of the 16th century for fact, not fiction. Certainly her extensive and detailed research of the period is to be applauded.

Killing Auntie, By Andrzej Bursa

Friday, 4 December 2009

From the admirable CB Editions comes a delightful discovery. Dead at 25 in 1957, the Polish postwar firebrand Andrzej Bursa acquired a reputation as a quick-burning, existentially tormented rebel: a literary James Dean of the Stalinist era.

News from the Empire, By Fernando del Paso

Friday, 4 December 2009

In 1861 the Mexican President, Benito Juárez, suspended payments on his country's foreign debt to Europe. This prompted France to send in the troops and an Austrian, Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg, was persuaded to become Emperor of Mexico. As Fernando del Paso demonstrates in his dramatic reconstruction of the ill-fated French intervention, the story of Maximilian is intimately entwined with the ambitions of the last French monarch, Napoleon III, and his wife Eug�nie.

A Genius for Failure, By Paul O'Keeffe

Friday, 4 December 2009

The painter Benjamin Robert Haydon was an exact contemporary of Wordsworth, Keats and Lamb, and some of the most vivid recollections of their lives and their conversations are found within the pages of Haydon's Autobiography. Destiny, however, can be cruel. That Haydon should be remembered for his writings would have been an anathema to him. He regarded himself, first and foremost, as a history painter, on the grandest of grand scales, in an age when history painting was beginning to lose its importance.

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