Books & Poetry

For a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Saramago does high concept more like a science fiction specialist. In 1998’s ‘Blindness’, an entire city lost its vision; the city of...

This intriguing account of dark times in France during WWII focuses on the curious figure of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix – alcoholic, virulent anti-Semite and devoted Catholic...

Jon Canter was at Cambridge with Douglas Adams (they co-wrote and performed in the 1974 Footlights revue) and has, over the years, supplied material for the pick of the ’80s and ’90s...

When, late last year, rumours began to circulate that Fourth Estate had spent an estimated £350,000 on a first novel called ‘Londonstani’ by a young Financial Times journalist,...

Opal Mehta is a high-school geek who has only ever had one goal: Harvard. She fails dismally in the interview, though, because when the Dean asks her what she does for fun, Opal is stumped. She...

‘The Outlaw’ begins with Willie Nelson extolling the virtues of choosing happiness over all other options, and one of the best things about Thomson’s fine biography of the country...

As a fledgling journalist, and under the pseudonym of Joe Finn, Joe Oakes exposes pastor Malachi Dove and his Psychogenic Healing Ministry as a sham after being fooled into thinking he has a...

The spirit of Smash Hits lives on at Peter Robinson’s marvellous website popjustice.com, which has just launched a series of ‘Pop Justice Idols’ – spoof children’s...

In 1976 Bertie Marshall was a 15-year-old androgyne who went by the name of Berlin (after the Lou Reed album). Part of the (in)famous Bromley Contingent, he hung out with Siouxsie and Severin, and...

Robinson’s startling debut takes us deep into the flawed, combative world of a severe epileptic. Lily O’Connor – rebellious, independent, troubling and very ill – inhabits a...