Kaveh Akbar’s poetry is captivating not only for its beautiful turn of phrases but also for its more profound musings in evocative lines that linger: “eternity looms/ in the corner like a home invader saying don’t mind me I’m just here to watch you nap”. Yet Calling a Wolf a Wolf isn’t simply a sum Read More
“What we are doing,” Tom told his crew, “is real and not real. We are living in a world where dreams are reality and reality is dreams. In our world everything starts from a dream.” This quote, from the final chapter of Muriel Spark’s Dreams and Reality, encapsulates the book’s title, and entices the reader Read More
Annabel was entirely aware of the image-making process in every phase. She did not expect this personal image to last long in the public mind, for she intended to play other parts than that of the suppressed tiger, now that she was becoming an established star. Muriel Spark’s The Public Image was shortlisted for Read More
As the centenary of Dame Muriel Spark’s birth approaches, we begin to revisit the wonderful work of one of Scotland’s finest writers. Muriel Spark 100, a year-long literary programme of events, will be taking place throughout the UK, in celebration of Spark’s life and revered writing. To mark the occasion, Polygon recently republished her twenty-two Read More
“Shadowed by her shadow she walks across the carpet.” Elsa Hazeltt’s shadow casts in the wrong direction. She wears secret codes from the Second World War on the bottoms of the shoes she buys on Madison Avenue. She, or her husband, Paul, or both, may or may not be insane. There is a chance that Read More
In her last published novel, The Finishing School, Muriel Spark throws open the doors of College Sunrise, a “mobile” finishing school run by aspiring novelist Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina Parker, near Lausanne in Switzerland. Alongside Nina’s comme il faut etiquette tuition, the young men and women are taught a number of artistic subjects Read More
With Autumn, Ali Smith has written a work of such layered ingenuity that I’ve placed a bet on it to win the Booker. Smith, who has an enviable awards pedigree to her name – winner of the Whitbread, Baileys, Costa and Goldsmiths prizes and twice previously Booker-nominated, is one of those rare authors whose published Read More
Zadie Smith is no stranger to a literary award shortlist, but her fifth novel, Swing Time, is a particularly intriguing nominee for this year’s Man Booker Prize. Skilfully tackling complex issues of race, class and identity, Swing Time firstly gives us an honest and engaging insight into these subjects through the eyes of a seven-year-old Read More
Naomi Alderman’s fourth novel, and first endeavour into speculative fiction, is based on the simple question: what might happen if women really did run the world? Set mainly in the near future, the novel is told from various points of view as first teenage girls, and then women, suddenly become aware of a whole new Read More
“Facts are chiels that winna ding / An downa be disputed” (Robert Burns, “A Dream”, 1786) This is an important book. As well as a history of the Scientific Revolution, it is a polemical defence of the very notion of such a revolution and an attack on the relativism which has infected much of academia Read More