Leaf Graffiti by Lucy Burnett (Northern House/Carcanet 2013) A sequence named ‘Variations on an Urban Monotone’ opens this debut collection, striking in its insistent syntactical and conceptual energies. Each new poem in the… Continue reading
Agua by Eduardo Berti, translated by Alexander Cameron and Paul Buck (Pushkin Press, 2003 [1997]) This short novel came to me by way of the Argentine Travelogue I began early in 2014 and… Continue reading
Naomi Foyle, Astra (2014) A very well developed and realised world, packed with rich characters. The protagonist Astra is growing up in a future society which superficially seems like an environmentally sustainable idyll where young people are… Continue reading
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013) This is a genuine 21st century masterpiece. The comparisons with Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy do not do it a disservice, neither does the suggestion that this… Continue reading
James Ellroy, Perfidia (2014) As with each new Ellroy, for me this was an event. I am not a natural fanboy – reading is a lifelong pleasure, a resource, a cave, but I am not… Continue reading
Philip José Farmer, The Unreasoning Mask (1983) This brilliant science-fiction narrative is centred on the quest of Ramstan, who has stolen an immensely powerful, sentient technological device, named the glyfa, from the planet Tenolt where it… Continue reading
Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things To Me (2014) A series of essays themed around gender and inequality (among them an experience which prompted a reader to coin the popular term “mansplaining”), Men Explain Things to Me is… Continue reading
José Bianco, Ficción y Reflexión (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988) This book is an anthology of texts by Argentine editor, translator, literary critic and novelist José “Pepe” Bianco (1908-1986), secretary of the renowned magazine Sur for 23 years. Borges,… Continue reading
Thomas Travisano (ed.), Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2010) A great book to dip into before settling down to write oneself. Gives a vivid portrait of the post-war… Continue reading
Richard Seymour, Against Austerity: How We Can Fix the Crisis They Made (2014) An angry yet clear-sighted analysis of austerity: what it really means, how it works, and, most importantly, who it benefits. Refusing… Continue reading
