Tiffany Murray has been a Hay Festival International Writing Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and her academic posts have included Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of South Wales. Her previous novels Diamond Star Halo and Happy Accidents were shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the London Book Award. Diamond Star Halo Read More
Two years ago, I read and loved Ismail Kadare’s 1970 work The Siege, a historical novel centred on 15th century Ottoman attacks on the Albanian city of Skhodër. Kadare is Albania’s foremost living author and, in rendering the episode, he absorbed me completely. Before reading The Siege, I knew nothing about the conflict to which Read More
Ancillary Justice won almost every major Science Fiction award last year, and it is easy to see why. The novel is a space opera, set across various parts of a well-established galactic empire, and starring a main character who is all that remains of a star-ship’s artificial intelligence. The very idea of attempting to write Read More
It is difficult to know what to make of Rhys Hughes’ absurd collection of short stories or flash fictions as he calls them. Stories collected in The Lunar Tickle are very short, often lasting only a couple of pages. They vary significantly in quality, with some being quite memorable and others not at all. Although Read More
A Well Tempered Heart is a quirky, mesmerising novel on the theme of self-discovery. This spirited sequel to the award winning The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, might seem simply to be an easy contemporary read yet it possesses much deeper meaning. In Jan-Phillip Sendker’s new novel, Julia, despite being a successful Manhattan lawyer with prestige Read More
“I am sacred, comfort me.” Upon first glance, the opening statement of Frederick Lightfoot’s The Extinction of Snow might not amount to much; but you find yourself wondering what it means. As you progress to the subsequent paragraph, this ostensibly meaningless sentence suddenly seems harrowing as it is in actual fact the last sentence of Read More
We live in an age where women are no longer defined solely by their role as mothers, but whether by their presence or absence, children remain a conspicuous theme in many women’s life. Young girls know that the start of mensuration signals that they can have children. We relentlessly educate teenagers on avoiding teen pregnancy, Read More
Mary Costello’s debut novel Academy Street is an excellent follow up to her acclaimed collection of short stories, The China Factory, in 2012. The novel details the quiet and somewhat unremarkable life of Tess Lohan, beginning in 1940’s rural Ireland and expanding to the bustle of New York later, spanning seven decades in total. From Read More
Trinidadian-born author Monique Roffey’s fourth novel, House of Ashes, is a fictionalised retelling of a botched 1990 coup attempt by Muslim organisation Jamaat al Muslimeen. The event is largely forgotten, even unknown, outside of the island of Roffey’s birth. However, in its exploration of how and why the disaffected become radicalised, it is not difficult Read More
Emma Healey’s debut novel is a Christmas cake of a treat: a rich mix of detective, mystery, thriller, which gives an insightful rendition of the workings of a mind taken over by dementia and the effects of the condition on others. The imagery throughout is cleverly worked into the narrative, linking the vital elements of Read More