Satire and settled scores: Universality by Natasha Brown reviewed
Skewering journalistic pretension to authority is the main business of a novel that contrives to be both viciously accurate and weirdly off the mark
The monk’s tale
In an essay for Prospect a few years back the writer Leo Benedictus noticed how many contemporary novels used what…
Tame family dramas: Christmas in Austin, by Benjamin Markovits, reviewed
My partner’s brother once found himself accidentally locked into his flat on Christmas Day, which meant having to spend it…
Highly charged territory
I first heard of this tragicomic spy romp around Israel and Palestine when Julian Barnes sang its praises in the…
More blood and tears
Irvine Welsh’s 1993 debut novel Train-spotting flicked a hearty V-sign in the face of alarm-clock Britain. ‘Ah choose no tae…
A plague on all P-words
This isn’t a book to read before lights out. It’s about a mentally ill man whose mother exiles him from…
Sibling rivalries
In The Past (set chiefly in the present) four middle-aged siblings spend an eventful summer holiday in the Devon country…
The mask of death
Remember Ebola? It killed more than 8,000 people last year — before we were all Charlie — with a quarter…
A jaunty romp of rape and pillage
The Brethren, by Robert Merle, who died at the age of 95 ten years ago, was originally published in 1977,…
After the funeral
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The…
A boy on a bicycle
In Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, the efforts of an academic claque propel the mysterious German author Benno von Archimboldi onto…
A legend in his own time
The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help…
