Shakespeare’s single explicit reference to America is found in The Comedy of Errors. The two Dromios are anatomising the unseen ‘kitchen wench’ Nell, who is ‘spherical, like a globe’: ‘I could find out countries in her,’ says one Syracusan brother. ‘Where America?’ asks his twin. The reply, ‘O, sir, upon her nose, all o’erembellished with
The Mediterranean-centred era spanning a century or so either side of 1492 is filled to the brim with stories. There was the discovery of the Americas by a bold Genoese navigator; power struggles between wealthy Italian families, waged through conspiracies, poisonings and stabbings; a radical Dominican monk who managed to impose near-theocratic rule on a
Historians argue endlessly and pointlessly about the extent to which the human factor rather than brute circumstance determines the course of events. History, geography and economic reality always constrain personal freedom of action. But within these limitations the individual can make a decisive difference. Britain’s war would have taken a different turn if Halifax rather
Two years ago, the counter-extremist analyst Julia Ebner decided she needed to delve deeper into the extremists trying to disrupt and destabilise our democracies. So the Austrian researcher invented five identities and joined a dozen secretive digital worlds of white nationalists, radical misogynists and jihadi women to explore their networks, their strategies and their recruitment
Were this a less good book than it is, it would be called How Bach Can Help You Grieve. As it is, Counterpoint serves very well, describing the American art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott’s intertwined themes: his reaction to the death of his mother, with whom he had a fractious and traumatic relationship, and
The Moroccan-born Leïla Slimani has made her name writing novels of propulsive intensity. Lullaby, the story of a nanny who kills the two children in her care, was the first to be published in English (it was also the most read book in France in 2016). Adèle, about a sex addict who takes little pleasure
Kiley Reid’s Philadelphia-set debut, Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is a satire on white saviour syndrome, woke culture and virtue-signalling motherhood. That it manages this balancing act with such political finesse and humour is testament to the powers of its author, who, like her heroine Emira, the 25-year-old black baby-sitter, spent time nannying for
Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, was tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa when the US Congress imposed House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953. This revoked the federally recognised status of many Native American tribes and withdrew legal protection of their territory, culture and religion. Gourneau was also a night watchman. While Erdrich’s
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English literature degree — and racism. Or, more specifically, they sang about the ubiquitous human habit of stereotyping people by race: Everyone’s a little bit racist, sometimes.Doesn’t mean we go around committing hate crimes.Look around and
Short, fat and shy, the protagonist of Adam Mars-Jones’s latest novel doesn’t have much going for him; even his name — Colin — is unprepossessing. He’s just 18 when he meets an older man called Ray, who is the ringleader of a biker gang in deepest Surrey. The year is 1975 and the bikers are
Forty-seven years ago, Virago paperbacks, with their stylish green spines and hint-of-the-transgressive colophons of a red apple with a bite out of it, revolutionised British publishing in a way that had not been seen since Allen Lane’s Penguins in the 1930s. It’s no exaggeration to say that the firm permanently altered a nation’s reading habits.
