Colm Tóibín’s sounds of silence
In his latest collection of stories, Tóibín endows his characters with plenty of feelings but fewer words
ByBook reviews
Read all the latest book reviews from the New Statesman and discover the best novels, non-fiction, essays and biographies. If you’re looking for something more specific, explore our sections dedicated to politics books and history books.
O Father, where art thou?
Literature still looks to the clergy for answers
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Brandon Taylor’s rebellious representations
Minor Black Figures novel depicts a black aesthete struggling to defy the fraught expectations of the art world
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The Apple half-century
How the electronics company went from near bankruptcy to global dominance – and changed our lives along the way
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The Whig interpretation of Europe
Roderick Beaton’s spirited history of the Continent cannot square its idealism with the bloody story that it tells
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Surviving forced labour in wartime Berlin
Ian Buruma’s account of his father’s years in a German factory accounts department is moving but limited in scope
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The Rasputin legend
He dazzled the tsar and tsarina with his virile charisma. But, as Antony Beevor shows, he also inspired their demise
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We must love WH Auden or die
The poet was a restless spirit, haunted by his own Englishness
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The dark shadow of Palestinian exile
Hannah Lillith Assadi’s latest novel, Paradiso 17, draws on her father’s displacement
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Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the death of the Hollywood dream
In the 1970s, an ingenious trio of film auteurs conquered Hollywood. But is the renaissance now over?
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How academics ruined Shakespeare
It is time to retrieve the playwright we thought we knew – the man who asks universal questions – from…
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Asako Yuzuki’s acquired taste
Butter author Asako Yuzuki’s latest novel offers clues about what is behind the vogue for Japanese fiction
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Alice Coltrane’s transcendent score
A biography of the spiritual jazz musician reveals the tension between her devotion to John and to a higher calling
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The rise of British Muslims
What do two politicians’ memoirs reveal about the changing fortunes of British Muslims in public life?
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Melvyn Bragg’s class act
Was his success “social mobility”, or just good luck?
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Zoe Strimpel’s orgy of contradictions
Good Slut, her new book, is somehow outrageous and boring at once
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The passion of Will Self
The writer says his new book could be his last
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Time-travelling angels in the Blitz
Francis Spufford’s new novel Nonesuch combines WW2 and wizards
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Michael Pollan’s hunt for consciousness
We have it. Plants have it. Machines may soon have it. Why do they all need one?
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The breaking of nation-states
Utopian visions of an internationalist future ring hollow in dystopian times
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