Titan books have released their second omnibus of the Daily Express comic strips based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Francis J. Okolo gives the debrief A cursory flick through the illustrations in this wonderful collection sends you hurtling back to a pre-swinging-’60’s London of oak-panelled offices, old school ties and gentlemen’s clubs. John McLusky’s drawings prove a prescient […]
Roberto Bolaño: Nazi Literature in the Americas
Published a few years before the works that made him a posthumous literary superstar, Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas is an evasive, hybrid beast. Ben Granger gets to grips with it This arcane curiosity of a book – first published in Roberto Bolaño’s native Chile a few years before more his more famous […]
Progressive Rock: The Sound That Time Forgot
In the newly-revised edition of his book The Music’s All That Matters, music journalist Paul Stump finds acceptance of the last musical taboo – progressive rock. Jason Weaver bends an ear In his Spike review of June 2000, Stephen Harper reckoned Unknown Pleasures the definitive work on Roxy Music for many years to come. Its […]
Sound Advice: Phill Brown’s Musical Odyssey
Sound engineer Phill Brown has an astonishing musical CV. He tells Jason Weaver how to keep it rolling “I was there!” exclaims James Murphy in LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’, before listing his crucial interventions in the history of rock music. But Phill Brown’s ‘right place and right time’ memoir of his career in the […]
Eric Hobsbawm: How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism
Reviewed by Jacob Knowles-Smith In the week after Michael Foot, socialist and former-Labour Party leader, died I encountered a veteran taxi-driver early one morning in Liverpool. What started as mere headshaking and tutting at the fellow revellers eventually became a discourse on the political traditions of Liverpool and the state of Britain as a whole. […]
M. Ageyev: Novel With Cocaine
A review by Dolly Delightly I have a penchant for esoteric Russian literature of the kind that’s mostly found in frowsy second-hand bookshops which, I am unashamed to say, I frequent with steadfast regularity. About a week ago, during one such visit, I picked up a 1985 Picador edition of a book called Novel With […]
Superman: Earth One (DC Comics)
Reviewed by Kes Seymour Superman is an ideal. Superman is perfect – there’s nothing that he can’t do; he will always overcome any challenge (he even managed to come back from the dead in the 1990s) and this is why people love him. But it’s also why writers have struggled to create new ‘interesting’ stories […]
Everything That Follows Is Based On Recent, Real-Life Experience That Has Been Proven To Work – James Shepherd-Baron
“Everything that follows is based on recent, real-life experience that has been proven to work” — James Shepherd-Baron First off — the title. Shepherd-Baron was clearly aiming for the hard-bitten no nonsense “Dettol-does-what-it-says-on—the-tin” approach when naming this comprehensive world survival guide, but has ended up producing the clumsiest and most ungainly titled book of the […]
Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism
The only game in town, and a rigged one at that. In what is swiftly becoming ‘living memory’, capitalism is now the only economic, social and political system deemed possible, the logic of its late incarnation invading every aspect of life, culture, even inner thought. So absolute is its mental grip that when international finance […]
Wyndham Lewis’ Blast: An Explosive Journal
Ben Granger First published in 1914, Wyndham Lewis’ Blast has just been republished by Thames And Hudson. For centuries, when the Great British reading public scanned the covers of their journals, from Blackwoods through to the Edinburgh Review , the only words they saw were in Roman typeface, crowded and tiny. Imagine their thoughts on […]
Jessica Anthony – The Convalescent
Dan Coxon You have to give Jessica Anthony credit: in this current climate of MFA-educated clones it’s unusual to come across a truly unique narrator. We’ve all read plenty of Holden Caulfield rip-offs, or various takes on the Kerouac drifter-philosopher, the William Burroughs educated-junky, or the Paul Bowles traveller-adventurer. There haven’t been too many Hungarian […]
Michael Foot: The Uncollected Michael Foot – Essays Old and New
Ben Granger Mention the name Michael Foot and listen out for the automatic sneer. A rolling of eyes at a “disastrous leader”, accompanied no doubt with devilishly cutting asides about donkey jackets, walking sticks or Worzel Gummidge, delete as appropriate. Gerald Kaufman’s deathless Wildeanism chiding Foot’s 1983 Labour Manifesto as “the longest suicide note in […]
Patrick McGrath – Trauma
Dan Coxon There’s something to be said for the contemporary novelist having a background in psychology. While the mass-market thrillers and romance novels that pack the supermarket shelves are happy to remain plot-driven page-turners, the modern literary novel prides itself on its ability to unravel the thoughts and emotions of its characters rather than relying […]
Sergio Ramirez – A Thousand Deaths Plus One
Pedro Blas Gonzalez Reminiscent of Borges in its maze-like complexity of shadowy figures and surreal situations, A Thousand Deaths Plus One is as unpredictable a work as it is intricate in construction. Sergio Ramirez’s novel is essentially a work of intrigue. In 1987 the author found himself in Warsaw on a state visit. Ramirez was […]
Jorge Luis Borges – The Book of Imaginary Beings
Ben Granger Borges is that rare writer, one who can truly change your outlook forever. To read Labyrinths or Ficciones is to experience the universe anew, to find a poetry in mathematics, a mysticism in reason. In tales like “Funes the Memorious”, “The Library of Babel” and “The Garden of Forking Paths”, Borges explores the […]
Ben Stevens – From Lee to Li: An A-Z Guide of Martial Arts
Ian Hocking Some books change your life and From Lee to Li: An A-Z Guide of Martial Arts will not be one of them. But it is fun and straightforward. I won’t add that it’s unlikely to trouble the Trade Descriptions people because Lee and Li both begin with L – but Adams to Yuksa […]
Andrzej Stasiuk – Tales of Galicia
Jason Weaver Tales of Galicia is set in the south-east corner of Poland a few years after the fall of Communism. A time of upheaval certainly but, as the name of the volume implies, this part of the world is no stranger to social change. A mountainous region, once called Galicia, it rolled down into […]
Alain Mabanckou – Broken Glass
Jason Weaver Broken Glass is a derelict who drinks at a bar called Credit Gone West in the Trois-Cents district of the DR Congo. As a disgraced school teacher and unrepentant drunk, he is an unconventional narrator, the kind we might find in Camus novels. The words you are reading, he explains, are jottings made […]
Joe Dunthorne – Submarine
Ben Granger The “coming-of-age” teenage novel is now a well-weathered archetype, every bit as established in the literary pantheon as the state of the nation diorama, or the star-crossed romantic tragedy. A teenage narrator has the potential to reflect the world in a purer and starker state. At the same time, the self-righteous certainty and […]
Belinda Webb – A Clockwork Apple
Ben Granger As you may guess from the title of this first novel by Belinda Webb, she isn’t shy in acknowledging its chief influence. This iApple/i shares with Burgess’ iOrange/i more than merely its title. Once again we have a teenage gang leader by the name of Alex, indulging in artful thuggery and vicious wordplay […]
Daniel Wallace – Mr. Sebastian And The Negro Magician
…Given his subject matter it’s natural that Daniel Wallace should attempt some authorly tricks, and his multiple points of view allow him to play with the concepts of truth and illusion. By the end you’ll be uncertain whether Mr. Sebastian was the devil, whether he was actually several different people – or even if he existed at all…
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
…It’s hard to imagine any debut writer having a story this short published as a stand-alone novel, yet because McEwan is one of the literary world’s big earners the public are expected to pay more than twice as much for his work…
Jim Crace – The Pesthouse
“…While Jonathan Raban’s Surveillance looked at the near future, however, and predicted where we might end up if the current political climate continues, Jim Crace takes us several centuries further into this brave new world. Except it’s not so brave, and not even so new. In fact, it’s positively medieval….”
Unholy Terrors – The horror writings of Arthur Machen
“…A sinister experiment in the Welsh hills. A daughter born of an unholy communion. A peasant boy terrified witless by a strange tableau in the glade of a wood. A prosperous Londoner discovered raving and destitute on the city streets…”
Jonathan Raban – Surveillance
“…When even Green Day can achieve international success with a Bush-whacking album, then you can be sure that something’s going on in the public consciousness. Jonathan Raban takes a slightly different approach to the subject with his new novel Surveillance…”
