1 week ago ‘He was just trying to earn a few kopecks’: how newly translated stories reveal Chekhov’s silly side

With daft jokes and experimental wordplay, the first comprehensive translations of his lesser-known stories show Anton Chekhov in a new lightFew writers are as universally admired as Chekhov. As Booker winner George Saunders puts it, “Chekhov – shall I be blunt? – is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.” Novelists from Ann Patchett to Zadie Smith cite him as an inspiration. His plays The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard still pack out theatres internationally. In the past year alone, Andrew Scott wowed audiences in his one-man Vanya for London’s National Theatre and Cate Blanchett took on the role of Arkadina in The Seagull at the Barbican. But how much did you know about his silly side?Anton Chekhov: Earliest Stories offers the first comprehensive translation in English of the stories, novellas and humoresques that the Russian author wrote in the early 1880s. And it is supremely juvenile in the best way. The re...

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1 week ago Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck review – a kaleidoscopic study of transience

A collection of columns by the German Booker winner reveals a keen eye for details that mark the passing of timeJenny Erpenbeck wrote the pieces collected in this compact yet kaleidoscopic book for a column in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; published in German in 2009, they now appear in an English translation by Kurt Beals, following the immense success of Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos, which won the 2024 International Booker prize.It’s interesting and instructive to reflect on what German newspaper readers made of the column in the early years of the new millennium, nearly two decades on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. For while Erpenbeck adopted some of the features of the form – apparently throwaway observations on daily life, such as minor irritation at the difficulty of sourcing proper splitterbrötchen, an unpretentious pastry now pimped for a more elaborate and wealthy clientele – she consistently enlarged and complicated it. Into that recognisable tone of e...

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2 w. ago Memoirs, myths and Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie’s 10 best books – ranked!

As the author publishes a new story collection, we rate the work that made his name – from his dazzling Booker winner to an account of the 2022 attack that nearly killed him “It makes me want to hide behind the furniture,” Rushdie now says of his debut. It’s a science fiction story, more or less, but also indicative of the sort of writer Rushdie would become: garrulous, playful, energetic. The tale of an immortal Indian who travels to a mysterious island, it’s messy but charming, and the sense of writing as performance is already here. (Rushdie’s first choice of career was acting, and he honed his skill in snappy lines when working in an advertising agency.) Not a great book, but one that shows a great writer finding his voice, and a fascinating beginning to a stellar career. Continue reading...

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2 w. ago Not OK? Booker winner Flesh ignites debate about state of masculinity

Toxic male behaviour of David Szalay’s protagonist reflects real-world concerns about a ‘crisis of masculinity’In the immediate aftermath of David Szalay’s book Flesh winning the Booker prize, one feature of the novel stood out: how often the protagonist utters the word “OK”.The 500 times István grunts out the response is part of a sparse prose style through which the British-Hungarian Szalay gives the reader few insights into the inner workings of a man whose fortunes rise and fall. Continue reading...

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3 w. ago ‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife...

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3 w. ago David Szalay’s Flesh is the most deserved Booker Prize winner in years

The British-Hungarian author’s triumph caps off what has already been a wonderful year for the UK’s most prestigious award for fiction, writes Martin Chilton

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3 w. ago The risky strategy of Booker winner Flesh pays off | Justine Jordan

The protagonist’s inner life is hidden from the reader in this highly original novelDavid Szalay wins 2025 Booker prize for ‘dark’ FleshReflecting on the Booker judging process, chair Roddy Doyle stressed the “singularity” of Flesh, the most unusual novel on the shortlist. In his sixth book, Hungarian-British writer David Szalay takes a classic story arc – one man’s journey through life, from childhood to old age – and presents it in a radically new and challenging way, scooping out the interiority that usually powers the novel form.We meet his protagonist, István, as a bored 15-year-old in a Hungarian backwater. He is seduced by a middle-aged neighbour into a relationship suffused with shame and disgust; a confused act of violence knocks his life off course; he joins the military and is stationed in Kuwait; he moves to London and works as a bouncer before the rising tides of global capital carry him, for a while, into the monied elite. And all the while, we are cut off from his tho...

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