Joan Didion without her style
The writer’s posthumous therapy journal is raw and unvarnished – the most direct book she never wrote.
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.
Joe Dunthorne’s lessons in chemistry
The novelist thought his great-grandfather’s memoir would be a story to be proud of. He found something else.
By
Fear and loathing in Liverpool
Why a “left-wing city” can still host a race riot.
By
The best books of 2025 so far
From urgent new fiction to the inside story of Keir Starmer’s Labour, the New Statesman picks the season’s essential reading.
By
Samuel Beckett’s art of reduction
In The Unnamable, the writer’s prose was stripped to the bone – and the bone itself boiled white.
By
The best children’s books for Easter
From hidden jewels to good eggs, children will be delighted by these funny, moving stories.
By
Katie Kitamura’s study of social dynamics
The novelist coolly examines how we interact with each other in a deeply unsettling story of reversals and doubles.
By
Jensen Huang: the man who powers AI
The entrepreneur’s microchip company Nvidia has fuelled a tech revolution, but his success is built on failure and suffering.
By
Inside the ugly world of Facebook
In Careless People, former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams reveals the callousness at the heart of the company.
By
The dark side of the Moomins
Tove Jansson’s beloved stories, which turn 80 this year, are not cute: they are angry tales of apocalypse and breakdown.
By
Capitalism (Taylor’s Version)
Swift is a self-made billionaire and the most profitable live musician in history. What can her ascendance teach us?
By
The glory and grime of boxing
In The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing, Donald McRae deftly captures the sport’s ugliness and exhilaration.
By
A Northumbrian pilgrimage
A poet’s journey through the north-east reveals our universal desire to belong to a place we call home.
By
From Manya Wilkinson to David Szalay: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Operation Bowler by Jonathan Glancey and Lesbians: Where Are We Now? by Julie Bindel.
By
Picasso’s mistreated muses
It was women who drove his art to its heights – and women who bore the brunt of his callousness…
By
The murder that shocked the Edwardians
The case of Dr Crippen contains a story of multiple on-the-make lives as well as gruesome death.
By
I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a document of hellish times
In her debut novel, Roisin Lanigan’s caustic social commentary of renting in London is undercut by supernatural horror.
By
From Russell Shorto to Xiaolu Guo: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Affairs: True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Desire by Juliet Rosenfeld and The Story of Witches: Folklore,…
By
Norman Lewis’s secret 20th century
In wartime Naples or Castro’s Cuba, the inconspicuous writer-traveller was a vivid chronicler of unseen worlds.
By
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s lessons in humanity
Theft, the Nobel Prize winner’s new novel, is full of wisdom and free of judgement.
By