Girl: Edna O’Brien’s moving fictionalisation of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram
In Maryam, O’Brien has created a character both archetypal and individual: narrator of her own story and repository of others’.
By
Books
Latest in
Books
David Goldblatt’s The Age of Football shows the game’s global power
There are two great lies told about football: that it is only a game, and that it shouldn’t mix with…
By
Footsoldiers is a search for answers to the question: who joins a political party?
It is hard to escape the conclusion that British politics is a middle-class voluntocracy: a politics run by “a bunch of…
By
Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth, a controversial but immaculately restrained Norwegian novel
Hjorth’s precision becomes a quietly devastating mimicry of the effects of trauma, and of ambiguous and conflicting memories.
By
Here’s looking at you – how China built its Great Firewall
During Mao Zedong’s rule, you could be detained for discussing your cat (as the academic Perry Link once noted, the…
By
Hussein Kesvani’s Follow Me, Akhi: investigating Islam and the internet
The culture of the internet and the world of devout religious faith are two areas that, for outsiders, can be…
By
The dangers of meritocracy
Why the supposed cure for social inequality is making life worse for everyone – even its apparent winners.
By
How the Nineties dream turned sour
It was a time when we chose life. When football was coming home. When a new day was dawning, was…
By