21 h. ago 'In 20 years of reviewing, I'm not sure I've read a funnier book, or one I've enjoyed more': The best Literary Fiction out now

Anthony Cummins reviews the best Literary Fiction out now.

Politics

2 w. ago The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club by Sepideh Gholian review – like no recipe book you’ve ever read

A political prisoner lifts the lid on the hardships and fantasies of life in Iran’s most notorious jailThe Iranian political prisoner Sepideh Gholian’s account of life on the women’s wards in Bushehr and Evin prisons is a blindsiding blend of horrifying concrete detail, dizzying surrealism and wild optimism. In every line and in every moment it attempts to recreate, it is entirely and unconditionally defiant. For the reader, discombobulation comes from (at least) two directions. At one moment, you are presented with, for example, the story of a woman attempting to abort her foetus under permanent camera and human surveillance, because the consequences for her unborn child, herself and other family members if the pregnancy continues are unimaginably violent. At another you are instructed how to make elephant ears pastries, designed for large gatherings of visitors, in the cheery tones of the encouraging expert (“It’s not at all messy and impossible to get wrong. You do...

Events

2 w. ago Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy review – a classic that will be read for decades to come

Sketched in cinematic black and white, this illustrated interpretation of the late author’s postmodern detective novel is a ‘stone-cold masterpiece’It was a wrong number that started it – literally in the case of The New York Trilogy. In 1980, or thereabouts, Paul Auster twice answered the phone, only to hear a voice ask: “Is this the Pinkerton Agency?” (Pinkerton is a legendary American detective bureau.) He told the caller they had a wrong number, yet he was soon filled with regret. Here, surely, was a story: why hadn’t he asked any questions? But never mind. While a third call never arrived, in its place came inspiration. Out of the disappointing silence, Auster spun the first volume of his trilogy, City of Glass, a literary hall of mirrors that made him famous.City of Glass was published in 1985. Nine years later, under the brilliant eye of Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli created a graphic adaption of the book, produced with Auster’s appro...

Politics

2 w. ago We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown review – you’ll read nothing else like it this year

This exhilarating debut about working-class girls growing up in the hope-starved atmosphere of a small northern English city feels essentialSometimes you need to leave a place before you can write about it, and Colwill Brown’s Doncaster from the late 90s to 2015 is that place. This lacerating, exhilarating debut novel, written almost entirely in South Yorkshire dialect, spans nearly 20 years in the lives of its protagonists Kel, Shaz and Rach, from the Spice Girls to the drug spice. It manages to be both boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying, familiar and yet wholly original. It feels essential. You will probably read nothing else like it this year.“Remember when we thought Donny wut whole world? Before we knew we wa Northern, when we seemed to be central, when we carved countries out ut farmers’ fields, biking through neck-high rapeseed, cutting tracks ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke, or place they changed trains once ont way ...

Politics

3 w. ago Bogus AI reviews on the rise as holidaymakers warned of 20 clues to look out for

A study of 2,000 adults also discovered three in 10 travellers have been left disappointed when they arrived at their destination - as the review they read had been exaggerated

Events

3 w. ago How to fight a fascist state – what I learned from a second world war briefing for secret agents | Zoe Williams

You can forget the advice on disguises, secret codes and spreading propaganda by dropping leaflets in train carriages. But there is something for us all here about the need for actionThe SOE Syllabus was a series of lectures given to prospective secret agents in Britain during the second world war. These “lessons in ungentlemanly warfare” were released from the top secret bit of the Public Record Office (now known as the National Archive) and published as a historical curio in 2001, when my esteemed colleague John Crace picked out the sillier bits in one of his Digested Read reviews. There was a whole lecture about how to craft a disguise, in which people with sticky-out ears were advised to use glue to pin them back.But now, 24 years later, I have picked up the book with a graver purpose – just on the off-chance that if we end up having to resist a fascist state, the past might have something to offer. They won’t know everything, these ungentlemanly gentlemen, being as they didn’t ...

Politics

last month The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami review – what if AI could read our minds?

Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this powerful dystopian novel imagines people jailed for their potential to commit crimesArriving home at Los Angeles international airport, Sara Hussein is asked by immigration and customs officers to step aside, then taken to an interview room. The fundamentals of this scene are familiar – you’ve probably watched something like it in a film, or dreamed about it happening to you; perhaps it already has. But Sara lives in a new world, several decades in the future, and she is being arrested because Scout, the state’s AI security system, has flagged something irregular inside her mind.Sara seems unexceptional: she’s a museum archivist, married and mother to young twins. She once had an argument with her husband Elias after he impulsively part-exchanged the family Toyota for a Volvo. Sara sees herself as a person who “couldn’t possibly be considered a member of the lawbreaking classes”, until the moment at the airport when an officer informs her that ...

Politics