21st century Juliet
If I marry Perry Paris, the family estate will be saved—but I love a builder boy
Tag: Short stories
Between the lines
Publishing is a gloriously uncertain trade. Bestsellers cannot be manufactured, while low-key titles often achieve success through word of mouth
The executioner’s voice
Jonathan Littell's doorstopper novel is not merely a feat of linguistic audacity—it also raises profound questions about history, morality and luck
A kind of genius
Thomas Pynchon's new novel is full of sharp jokes and gorgeous writing—but it is also incoherent and emotionally distancing. Is the journey worth it?
Exporting Englishness
Throughout the 20th century, English writers achieved success in the US by selling an elite image of the country based on Oxbridge and public schools. Can any other vision of English life strike a chord with Americans?
Testicular cancer vs the behemoth
Austin Weaver's mission is to forget his balls and save his girlfriend from a monster
Orhan Pamuk
The author began this year facing prison, and ends it a Nobel laureate. Here he discusses his artistic development, his country's future, and the benefits of having both a western and eastern soul
Between the lines
Amid great secrecy, and after years of anonymous labour, here comes Thomas Harris's latest Hannibal Lecter novel. But do readers still care?
Return of the Roman
Knowledge of Latin may be in decline, but novels, films and documentaries about the Romans have never been more popular. We are still dimly, unconsciously, aware that our culture grew out of classical civilisation
In the jar
Adrift at sea, submerged in olive oil, all my bodily needs are satisfied, and I can dream
Reports from the gulag
Martin Amis's new novel is brilliant and insightful, but offers little news to those versed in the 20th century's first-hand accounts of atrocity
The conversation
A child soldier leads Father Angelo to speak with the devil in the African bush
Vasily Grossman
The Russian writer's novel "Life and Fate"—often compared with "War and Peace"—was first published in English in the mid-1980s. But only now is interest taking off among a wider public
A masterful failure
John Updike has tried and largely failed to convey the interior life of an Arab-American terrorist. Still, it is always a pleasure to watch a master at work
James Lasdun
An interview with the winner of the inaugural National Short Story prize
The dog
Born into the life of a stray, Pestrushka finds herself being trained for spaceflight
Toothache
Sol can either go to the dentist, or play poker with an old friend
Charmless Hav
By updating her fictional city, Jan Morris offers a fable of sterile modernisation, a lament for lost culture and a farewell to the purpose of travel
Angela Carter’s beasts
She pricked the pieties of Leavisite critics and feminists alike, but her fairy tales have outlived them all. They contain a black thread tying love to violence
The Labrador fiasco
A story of travellers lost in the wilderness ties me to my father near the end