John de Falbe 
Chaos and the old order
If Gregor von Rezzori is known to English language readers, it is likely to be through his tense, disturbing novel Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (partly written in English), and/or his… Read more
Memories in a world of forgetting
It is several years since Anna Funder published Stasiland, her acclaimed book about East Germany. Her new book is a novel concerning a group of German political activists surrounding the… Read more
Captain courageous
The sum of hard biographical facts about Captain Cook never increases, nor is it expected to. It is the same with Shakespeare. J. C. Beaglehole’s Life of Captain James Cook… Read more
Desk-bound traveller
With a new novel each year, Robert Edric cannot have much time for courting London’s literary establishment, but does he stay at home in East Yorkshire? The London Satyr is… Read more
The start of the affair
In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great… Read more
Small but perfectly formed
Some years ago, Edmund de Waal inherited a remarkable collection of 264 netsuke from his great-uncle Iggie, whom he had got to know 20 years previously while studying pottery and… Read more
Far from idyllic
We’re Levantines … hold your head up high and say, ‘Yes, I am. What of it? Byzantine and Ottoman…’ We’re Levantines … hold your head up high and say, ‘Yes,… Read more
The lure of the gypsies
William Blacker ‘set off to explore the newly “liberated” countries of Central Europe immediately after Christmas 1989’. From Berlin he went to Prague, where he wondered, ‘Should I continue eastwards,… Read more
A patriarch and his family
The title story of this exceptional collection is the only one directly concerned with the presiding figure of K. K. Harouni, a wealthy Pakistani patriarch. In each of the others,… Read more
One-man triumph
The Companion to British History (Third Edition), by Charles Arnold Baker Readers familiar with the first edition of The Companion to British History (Loncross, 1997) will already know that its… Read more
Hope and Glory
Home, by Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Robinson’s magnificent previous novel, Gilead, was structured as a letter by the elderly, ailing Reverend John Ames to his young son. A persistent theme was… Read more
Night thoughts in an unhappy home
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster August Brill is a widower whose leg has been smashed by a car. He lies awake at night in the house he shares… Read more
Good length delivery
This short novel was first published in a tiny edition at the end of last year. Since then it has won the McKitterick Prize (for the best first novel by… Read more
Flouting the rules
This intriguing novella tells the story of a drop of oil from its earlier form as the heart of a prehistoric horse to its combustion in the engine of a… Read more
Love among the journalists
At the centre of James Meek’s new novel — a fine successor to The People’s Act of Love — there is a brilliant scene in which Adam Kellas, a war… Read more
Once happy havens
Leon Sciaky was born in Salonica in 1893, when the city was still a provincial Ottoman town. His family were grain merchants, Sephardic Jews who had been settled there for… Read more
Shifting hearts, shifting sands
A man of about 60 who had read the American edition of this novel — it was published there a couple of months ago — told me lately that it… Read more
Radium and the nature of love
For 16 years, from 1878, Blanche Wittman was a patient in the infamous Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, diagnosed by the famous Dr Charcot as a hysteric. Putting Blanche on display… Read more
The maze of the mind
With the publication last year of Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear, the first volume of a trilogy and his eighth translated work of fiction, it was plain that… Read more
Latest blogs
- Why, once again, a fall in student immigration is good Andrew Green
- Sally Bercow libelled Lord McAlpine, High Court rules Steerpike
- The British paedophile who’s still on the run James Kirchick
- Revive the Snooper’s Charter? It’s already obsolete David Blackburn
- Jesse Norman interview: Edmund Burke, our chief of men JP O'Malley
- Lee Rigby named as victim of Woolwich attack Sebastian Payne
- The friendless Help-to-Buy scheme Isabel Hardman
