Books of the year 2024
New Statesman writers and guests choose their favourite reading of the year.
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
The political afterlife of Paradise Lost
From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
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Celebrity book clubs are bad for literature
The novel becoming a cultural accessory means to look like a reader, not be one.
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JG Ballard’s apocalyptic art
In Empire of the Sun, published 40 years ago, the great novelist turned his childhood experiences in a Japanese prisoner-of-war…
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Janet Frame’s asylum dreams
The New Zealand author, born 100 years ago, was both tormented and inspired by her experience of mental illness.
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Bonfire of the humanities
With departments in decline, the English professor has become a risible figure in the British novel.
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Edna O’Brien was the last great Irish iconoclast
Great Irish literature is defined by dissent. So why do so many writers uphold the status quo?
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Why I feel like a literary Gareth Southgate
Also this week: My part in the great IT outage, and trying to impress Keir Starmer.
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Labour’s anti-intellectual moment
The past three decades have seen the Everymanification of British politics.
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The anti-Baillie Gifford mob wants to police art. Writers must not give in
In cutting ties with the firm, literary festivals have fallen prey to the worst sort of playground bully.
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James Shapiro Q&A: “I’d like to live in 1600s London – just for a week”
The American academic on finding fulfilment in Shakespeare, structuralism and dry-stone walls.
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The Clarksonification of the countryside
Also this week: AI enters the classroom, and the British obsession with gardening vs Brexit red tape.
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Salman Rushdie: “The world has abandoned realism”
The novelist on the threat to free speech, facing his attacker, and why writing Knife gave him back “the power”.
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Salman Rushdie’s warning bell
His memoir Knife is a defence of free speech for a new age of intolerance. We should listen.
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Percival Everett’s American absurd
The author behind American Fiction on rewriting Mark Twain, the evolution of racism, and his addiction to irony.
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A travelling tribute to James Baldwin
Also this week: Underdressed in snowy New York, the beauty of book covers, and delighting in London’s diversity.
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The Royal Society of Literature has failed us
As a former chair of the RSL, it is sad to see its mission being undermined by a new censoriousness.
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The women that books built
How the bluestockings used wit and learning to subvert a deeply misogynist culture.
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The man who lived at the end of history
Why the 20th-century intellectual Ernesto de Martino believed that we should prepare for the apocalypse.
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JGA Pocock’s days of rage
How the violent upheavals of Seventies America helped forge the greatest historian of our time.
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