The search for queer cinema
Ryan Gilbey’s unconventional memoir It Used to Be Witches is wrapped in the film critic’s study of LGBTQ+ movie-making.
ByBook reviews
Read all the latest book reviews from the New Statesman and discover the best novels, non-fiction, essays and biographies. If you’re looking for something more specific, explore our sections dedicated to politics books and history books.
Princess Diana’s kinder Britain
A new biography plays down the royal’s cultural impact – but her gift for capturing the zeitgeist softened the hard edges…
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From Barbara Demick to Emily Kasriel: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring The Buried City by Gabriel Zuchtriegel and Poor Ghost! by Gabriel Flynn.
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Sayaka Murata’s strange new world
Her latest novel, Vanishing World, is a surprisingly fearful book, one which conflates biological essentialism with what is good and…
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Fang Fang’s acts of resistance
The Chinese author’s controversial novels are powerful narratives of patriarchal violence.
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The ghost of Muriel Spark
In her work and life the writer was obsessed with biography – but when she authorised her own she loathed…
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English literature’s last stand
Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline finds itself on the margins of modern society.
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How Russia became a franchise of the Wagner Group
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was the beginning, not the end of a new age of mercenary conflict.
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The People’s Republic of iPhone
How Apple unwittingly assisted China’s global technological dominance.
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Have we reached peak humanity?
Johan Norberg’s history of civilisation is an impressive conceptual achievement – but it has little to say about our own…
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The epic of James Joyce
How Richard Ellmann’s capacious 1959 biography shaped modern life writing.
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Neo-Nazi safari
How close can any journalist get to the English far right?
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From Helen Oyeyemi to bell hooks: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Irascible by Adrian Clark and Richard Calvocoressi and To Have or to Hold by Sophie Pavelle.
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The vagus nerve industry
Can a small and unassuming bundle of fibres really be the key to better health and a longer life?
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America’s broken commonwealth
The nation’s founding myth was based on faith and solidarity – but it also contained the roots of today’s democratic…
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Gertrude Stein’s quest for fame
The modernist phenomenon believed bad attention was better than none at all.
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The Biden cover-up
The extent of the president’s decline was concealed by his desperate team. The reality was even worse than it seemed.
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From Isabel Allende to Tim Wigmore: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Cooking in the Wrong Century by Teresa Präauer and The Lost Orchid by Sarah Bilston.
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Rafael Nadal: the king of Paris
No player has dominated one Grand Slam as Nadal did the red clay of Roland Garros.
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Andrea Dworkin’s dispatches from the sex wars
In her 1981 treatise, Dworkin called porn “the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls”. Forty years later, has sex-positive…
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