It is summer 2011 and Adolf Hitler has returned! In Timur Vermes’ latest novel, Look Who’s Back, the notorious dictator finds himself waking up in mysteriously good health in 21st Century Berlin. As he comes to terms with the modern world, Hitler gains a great deal of popularity among the German people, who believe him Read More
Breaking Light is Karin Altenberg’s second novel, following her Orange Prize (2012) nominated debut, Island of Wings. In Breaking Light, we follow Gabriel Askew in two narratives separated by around forty years – that of his life as a child and young adult in Mortford and then as a retired professor returning to his childhood Read More
Sceptics of literary prizes might claim that winning the Booker Prize once is a fluke. However, this point of view is hard to justify if an author wins said prize twice, and Australian author Peter Carey is one of only three people to have done so to date. Born in 1943 in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Read More
Andy Hixon actively unnerves with this chilling though compelling graphic novel, Lucia. An artist living in Sheffield, Hixon creates a uniquely stylised novel whose peculiar visuals are sure to scare a few but perhaps also charm some others. Exploring the medium of graphic novels, Hixon is able to convey a very special kind of feeling Read More
In a time before forensics and fingerprints, a night train snakes its way through a far Eastern land. As it makes an unscheduled stop, murder occurs in a first class carriage. Conveniently, a detective also happens to be travelling in the same carriage. Readers may be forgiven for imagining themselves in an Agatha Christie novel Read More
This collection of short stories has been greatly anticipated for some time. And what better place to review The Book of Gaza than from Dundee, the twin city of Nablus since 1980? The collection is edited by Atef Abu Saif who is shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction,an annual literary prize run Read More
After a ten year absence which at times has felt almost as unbearable as the pregnant silences that characterise his texts, Kazuo Ishiguro has returned with his seventh novel, The Buried Giant. Set in post-Arthurian Britain, the book follows Axl and Beatrice, two elderly Britons, as they set off across country to visit their son, Read More
Following on from her previous novel The Midwife’s Daughter, Patricia Ferguson returns to the sleepy Cornish town of Silkhampton to tell the story of both new and also some familiar characters. Set in the early 1930s, the book revolves around three women, all widely different but drawn together by circumstance into a situation which will Read More
Lissa Evans’ fourth novel, Crooked Heart, brings to the table a new story with old bones. Set in World War 2 England, one would expect it to be another historical drama, rife with tales of heroism and loss, of tragedy and hope. As you traverse the pages however, you find humour in the place of Read More
“Hell is other people” Jean-Paul Satre’s famous words permeate the text of Emily St John Mandel’s fourth novel, Station 11, where a virus wiping out 99% of the Earth’s population leads its survivors to realise how alone in the world they can truly be. The story opens with a production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring Read More