O Father, where art thou?
Literature still looks to the clergy for answers
ByNovels
The passion of Will Self
The writer says his new book could be his last
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Time-travelling angels in the Blitz
Francis Spufford’s new novel Nonesuch combines WW2 and wizards
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James Meek’s broken Britain
The LRB essayist’s new novel draws from his reporting on a dysfunctional nation
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Dirty realism goes supernatural
The writer’s new novel Vigil suffers from its ambition
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The mystery of Heathcliff’s race in Wuthering Heights
Is Jacob Elordi too white? Would Emily Brontë care?
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How Wuthering Heights seduced its readers
Nothing beats the thrills and seductions of Emily Brontë’s novel
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The moral grammar of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s Pakistan
This Is Where the Serpent Lives depicts a world shaped by non-Western values
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Julian Barnes departs on his own terms
Departure(s) is the novelist’s moving and inventive final book
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The Ten Year Affair made me hate myself
Erin Somers’ adultery novel is targeted at downwardly mobile, media-adjacent millennials
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Chess is fiction’s favourite metaphor
From Nabokov to Ballard, games like chess have enticed writers. But how will the advent of AI affect the novel’s…
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Christmas time is for murder
What exactly is the appeal of the festive crime mystery?
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DH Lawrence and the superiority of fiction
The Goldsmiths Prize Lecture on 100 years of the writer’s seminal essay “Why the Novel Matters”
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CD Rose: “Novels are like massive clouds which lower overhead”
The 2025 Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author on the art world, how we measure value and the role of criticism today
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Klaus Kinski, wrath of god
Benjamin Myers’ new novel follows the actor trailing both chaos and charisma in one infamous theatre production about Christ
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Jon Fosse’s war on convention
In his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize, the Norwegian author heads a radical counter-movement in publishing that spurns…
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Yrsa Daley-Ward: “How could anyone keep themselves all the way out of a novel?”
The Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author on colour as a language, trusting strangeness and how memories revise and rewrite themselves
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Charlie Porter: “Every word is tested”
The Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author on active reader engagement, the UK Aids memorial and learning to make pastry.
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Chris Kraus’s autofictional crimes
Is the American writer’s new book, The Four Spent the Day Together, a true-crime novel or a description of her…
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Thomas Pynchon’s lasting triumph
His latest novel borrows too freely from his previous work. But what work it has been
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