Donna Tartt’s The Secret History at 30
How a bestselling debut novel about a group of murderous students became a cult classic.
ByFiction reviews
Discover the best contemporary literature with the New Statesman’s expert reviews. From debut novels to short stories and literary veterans, get inspired here.
Reviewed in short: New books by Guy Standing, Stu Hennigan, Jessica Andrews and Don Paterson
The Blue Commons by Standing, Ghost Signs by Hennigan, Milk Teeth by Andrews and The Arctic by Paterson.
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The best children’s books for summer 2022
Magic and nature help children confront their fears in the best new books for young readers.
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The 15 best books for summer
The New Statesman’s selection of essential recent releases.
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Elif Batuman and the art of a real life
In Either/Or, Batuman’s sequel to The Idiot, the protagonist is bewildered by the mundane and fixated on the profound.
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The purpose of sex
Lillian Fishman’s bold and searching debut novel, Acts of Service, questions the meaning of desire and introduces a major new…
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Ottessa Moshfegh and the tedium of depravity
The American author’s new novel of medieval brutality aims for the Marquis de Sade but ends up closer to Shrek.
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The secret world of Mick Herron
How the author of Slow Horses and Bad Actors became the foremost living spy novelist in the English language.
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Against the Bolaño industry
In continuing to ransack Roberto Bolaño’s sketchy drafts, his estate has reached a new, degrading low.
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Daisy Hildyard’s new novel reflects the ambivalence and violence of nature
The exhilarating narrative explores the complex boundaries between the natural and man-made world in rural life.
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Julian Barnes’s baffling new novel attempts to imagine a world without Christianity
The ghost of a more interesting narrative hovers over Elizabeth Finch, which is a novel not of ideas but of…
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Ten years of Swimming Home
A decade on, the author returns to her Booker Prize-nominated novel, and finds conflict and mortal danger among the waves.
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The best new books of 2022 so far
The New Statesman’s selection of good reads for this spring.
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Ali Smith, our thoroughly modern modernist
In her new novel Companion Piece, Smith turns the legacy of Joyce and Woolf into vital fiction for the 21st…
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The New Statesman’s best books of 2021
The year's essential reading in 20 titles.
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Our favourite children’s books
From The Jungle Book to Z for Zachariah, New Statesman writers remember the children's books that shaped us
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John le Carré’s aimless final novel
Silverview is a disappointing coda to his Cold War masterpieces.
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In her new novel, Sally Rooney looks her critics in the eye
Beautiful World, Where Are You despairs at the shallowness of fiction – and then embraces it.
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Nadine Dorries’ book The Four Streets is a bad novel, riddled with Shamrockese
After her remarkable flights from fact in her statements on abortion, it's disappointing to find that Dorries is just not…
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