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Posts tagged as “books”

The Fourth Sister by Laura Scott review – the deadliest slur of all?

The poet pays homage to Chekhov in her second collection, in which boredom is both feared and acknowledged and desperation tussles with witLaura Scott’s poetry is clear, illuminating yet not uncomplicated: there is a mystery at its edges, a recognition...

Female trailblazers of block-printed design – in pictures

The Folly Cove Designers were a mid-century all-female collective based in Massachusetts, US. The illustrator and children’s book author Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios provided training to her neighbours in Folly Cove, and the women met monthly to excha...

Jonathan Escoffery: ‘Langston Hughes shifted my worldview’

The Booker-shortlisted US author on a life-changing vampire epic and inspiring writing about raceMy earliest reading memoryArnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Together, in the back of my parents’ car at the age of four or five. We had just come from a booksto...

Playing Games by Huma Qureshi review – a poignant sisterhood story

A young playwright borrows inspiration from the breakdown of her sister’s marriage in a novel filled with hard decisions Playing Games, Huma Qureshi’s fourth book and first novel, could have shared a title with her 2021 short story collection, Things W...

Blackouts by Justin Torres review – a *****-gothic dreamworld

A marginalised history is salvaged from real‑life medical records in this strange and glorious novelIf you locked Shirley Jackson and David Wojnarowicz in a room together, they might invent the kind of mouldering dreamworld that Justin Torres conjures ...

The Future by Naomi Alderman review – an apocalyptic techno-thriller

An AI program predicts the end of the world in this wobbly rollercoaster ride from the author of The PowerAfter a trio of small-scale novels Alderman hit the big time with her fourth, 2017’s The Power: a global bestseller, winner of the Women’s prize f...