Tibor Fischer
War Recollected In Tranquillity
Walter Kempowski has taken over Gunter Grass’s title of postwar German sage
Not Short, Not Sweet
When it comes the the novel, big isn’t always beautiful
A Master, But Not His Masterpiece
Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest novel is an entertaining tale of blackmail and family warfare — but is not up to the standard of his best
Auteur Provocateur
Michel Houllebecq’s Soumission is provocative but treads familiar territory
First Novel on a Booker Mission
Zia Haider Rahman is erudite and articulate – but no novelist
Scandinavia in slow motion
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a tedious chronicler of his own life
What To Do With the Huddled Masses?
David Goodhart’s The British Dream isn’t a scintillating read, but it is a thoughtful articulation of the UK’s changing attitudes to immigration
From Russia, With Erudition
Mikhail Shishkin’s new novel — the first to arrive in English — is ambitious, complicated and protean. And brilliant
The Master in Miami
Tom Wolfe isn’t at his best for all of Back to Blood, but at his best he’s the finest novelist working today
Bouquets and Barbed Wire
Orlando Figes’s Just Send Me the Word conveys the enduring love of a couple whose incarceration in Stalin’s gulags couldn’t suppress
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts