Changes to Roald Dahl reveal our hypocritical attitudes towards children and media
Kids are expected to shrug off a daily barrage of sexual and violent imagery – but are seen as too…
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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.
Roald Dahl’s books are nasty by nature – editing a word or two won’t make them nice
Sanitising the writer’s legacy may help him remain profitable – but his books can’t be easily cleaned up.
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The infinite art of John Donne
His life was blighted by poverty, but his poetry made exhilarating connections between sex, faith and death.
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Why Salman Rushdie’s imagination cannot be stopped
In his first interview since the attack on his life, the novelist refuses to be defined as target or victim.
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Dickens and his demons
How the novelist hid his cruel side – infidelity, bullying callousness, malice – in plain sight in his fiction.
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How a bestselling novel reveals French sympathy for Putin
The Wizard of the Kremlin has provoked fierce debate in France, where support for Russia lingers on both the right…
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The upside-down world of Lewis Carroll
9 December 1939: The author was a man who spoke to the child in all of us.
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What critics don’t get about Sally Rooney
To label her an over-hyped ingenue is to misunderstand her greatest conceit.
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The poetic history of David Graeber
The posthumous publication of “Pirate Enlightenment” shows how the anarchist, like any true intellectual, never grew out of his childhood…
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In search of a language of loss
Is there a correct way to mourn? When my mother died, I scoured the literature of grief for answers
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Bret Easton Ellis: “Wokeness is running out of room”
The Shards is the famously morbid author’s latest “trickster book”. He prefers cabinet shopping to culture wars now.
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The prophet of post-fascism
The late Marxist intellectual Gáspár Miklós Tamás captured Europe’s disorientation after the Cold War.
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What Norman Mailer can teach us
It is right to condemn the writer’s violent chauvinism – but a literature that has lost the power to challenge is…
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Pico Iyer Q&A: “I feel radiant when staying in a monastery”
The travel writer on Paddington Bear, the joy of watching sport, and finding a cure for jet-lag.
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From Tom Crewe to Caro Giles: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt and a study of conducting by Alice Farnham.
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The secret lives of Katherine Mansfield
A century after the writer’s death, a new biography shows how she withstood colonial prejudice and terminal illness to produce…
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The New Statesman’s best books of 2022
Our choice of the year’s essential fiction and non-fiction.
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The best children’s books of 2022
From magical picture books to thrilling young adult novels, courage and joy are in abundance.
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Then Later, His Ghost: a Christmas story by Sarah Hall – Audio Long Reads
Christmas coming, a man and a woman in a lonely long barn expecting a child, a post-apocalyptic landscape, a journey…
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Why Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is still so relevant
Really, the only things separating Bob Cratchit from the average 2022 Londoner are electricity and the fact he could afford…
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