Books

Lead book review

More from Books

Eat your way round Paris

‘Paris, like many old cities, is saturated with blood.’ The food writer Chris Newens certainly knows how to draw the reader in. A Londoner who has lived in Paris for the past ten years, he sets out to eat his way through all the arrondissements, starting with the 20th and spiralling backwards through the coil

The shocking state of perinatal care in Britain

We think of PTSD as something that happens to war veterans, but the Conservative politician Theo Clarke’s harrowing account of birth trauma proves otherwise. Her perspective is unique. When the former MP for Stafford was in the last weeks of her pregnancy, the government was in shambles. Boris Johnson was about to resign, to be

Maoist China in microcosm: Old Kiln, by Jia Pingwa, reviewed

Old Kiln is a novel spoken by the muse of memory but carved into shape by the fear of forgetting. Jia Pingwa (b.1952) wrote the first draft in 2009 after visiting his home village. Remembering a prolonged bloody conflict that tore the village apart during the Cultural Revolution, he was disturbed to find all traces

Hauntingly re-readable: Autocorrect, by Etgar Keret, reviewed

How to describe the Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s stories? Sci-fi scenarios, vignettes, thought experiments, fables, parables? They do not have plots so much as premises from which consequences, extrapolations and ironic complications stem. Unfortunately, the joy of these pieces makes them resistant to reviewing. You have to tell not show their ingenuity. For example, the

The force of Typhoon Tyson, Sydney, 1954

Lord Hawke, the grand old man of Yorkshire cricket and stalwart of the MCC, was not one to mince words. A century ago, the administrator rejected calls for the national XI to be led by Jack Hobbs. ‘Pray God no professional shall ever captain England,’ Hawke said. ‘We have always had an amateur skipper and

The enigma of Tiger Woods

The aim of this book is straightforward enough: a study of the Tiger Slam, the incredible 2000-01 season when Tiger Woods held the Masters, the US Open, the Open and the PGA championship all at the same time. It’s the Tiger Slam rather than the Grand Slam because purists will argue that technically (purists always