The novelist’s love triangle has its sights set on the elite insularity of the New York art world but its plot is programmaticI’ve always admired Hari Kunzru’s novels for their dense, satirical plunge into subcultures. His characters are nervy, laconic, forever looking for a chance to escape their domestic lives, brimming not so much with feelings as...

Dali L Yang’s critique of China’s response in the early days of the Covid pandemic is thoroughgoing if academic, while poet Liao Yiwu’s account mixes fact and fiction to extraordinary effectCast your mind back, if you will, to the beginning of the pandemic, before the World Health Organization had coined the term Covid-19. Back then, it was the “Wuhan...

This insightful memoir addresses the author and his parents’ struggles with mental illness, and offers a historical account of treatmentsThe year 2008 “should have been a good time in my life”, the novelist Tom Lee reveals in this memoir. He was a new father, homeowner, and his first book was imminent. Instead, he was in emotional freefall because of...

This follow-up, set 20 years on, kicks off with a marriage in crisis and skilfully conveys how blind we are to our own motivationsThe great thing about writing a sequel is that you can go straight in with the action, and no need to worry about setting the scene. Colm Tóibín certainly does that in Long Island, the follow-up to his 2009 novel Brooklyn....

The US-based writer and translator on his new novel set in 1930s Vienna, his deep connection with the authors he has worked with and why he always returns to Donna Tartt’s The Secret HistorySam Taylor, 53, was living in rural France with four well-received novels to his name when he realised that he wasn’t going to be able to support his family through...

Game-changing books that offer hope, as recommended by speakers at this year’s Hay festival, including Theresa May, Tom Holland, Helen Garner and Jon Ronsonchosen by Lenny Henry, actor and comedian Continue reading...