US Edition
Fancy a drop of ‘viper wine’? It might cure you – or kill you
Karen Bloom Gevirtz’s fascinating history of medicine, The Apothecary’s Wife, shines a light on the forgotten stories of female physicians
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How not to save a dying cinema
Esther Kinsky’s account of reopening an abandoned cinema, Seeing Further, is beautifully written – but is foiled by its own romantic hubris
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Why Alex James is a Britpop Jeremy Clarkson
The Blur bassist’s memoir of the band’s reunion, Over the Rainbow, is louche and amusing – even with all the mentions of his wine brand
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Is English a racist language? Not really
Whose Language is English?, by academic Jieun Kiaer, is a promising linguistic project – but the thesis is incoherent and often unconvincing
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Angela Merkel is anxious about her legacy – and her memoir shows it
The former chancellor’s autobiography, Freedom, is unlikely to lend her a Churchillian place in modern German history
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Should we thank Islam for the most beautiful buildings in Christendom?
Islamesque, by Diane Darke, makes a fascinating case for Muslim influence on Romanesque architecture – but with far too little evidence
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The American who dated Nazis and spied for the Soviets
Brendan McNally’s biography of Martha Dodd, Traitor’s Odyssey, has a fascinating subject. Why, then, does he refuse to take her seriously?
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Is this the most harrowing writer of the 20th century?
A newly published collection of Djuna Barnes’s short fiction, I Am Alien to Life, stars rotting corpses, grieving loners and men with whips
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A guide to all the monsters you might glimpse this Christmas
Sarah Clegg’s The Dead of Winter is a fascinating – if overambitious – history of winter festivities, from the Krampus to the Carnevale
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Want to live forever? Be sure to preserve your brain
In The Future Loves You, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston boldly argues that we’ll one day be able to ‘abolish death’ – that is, if anyone wants to
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A story of Berlin, obsession and some unfortunate daddy issues
Curtis Garner’s bold and unflinching debut novel, Isaac, follows a young writer’s struggles as he falls into a toxic relationship
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Why Russia’s oppression of Ukraine stretches back centuries
Eugene Finkel wrote Intent to Destroy to ‘fight back’ against a Russian spy – the result is a fascinating history of a toxic relationship
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Maggie O’Farrell’s new book isn’t just for younger readers
The novelist’s children’s book, When the Stammer Came to Stay, is a beautifully written tale inspired by O’Farrell’s own speech impediment
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Do you know a lazy English student? Give them this
Edwin Frank’s history of the modern novel, Stranger than Fiction, balances its erudition with plenty of gossip on Proust, Kafka and Woolf
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Imagine The Go-Between, but set in small-town America
James Grady has left behind spy thrillers with The Smoke in Our Eyes, a tender, coming-of-age novel set in 1950s rural Montana
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How a politician went from celebrated hero to forgotten nobody
Yuri Herrera’s novel, Season of the Swamp, imagines how a Mexican revolutionary may have spent his exile in the messy glamour of New Orleans
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Clarissa Eden – young beauty, political wife, cold ‘b----’
Hugo Vickers’s biography, Clarissa, is a fine portrait of the socialite and her marriage. But was she really as interesting as he makes out?
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Tokyo’s depraved underbelly, as seen by a tormented genius
The late Izumi Suzuki was a hostess, model and pioneering writer. Her novel Set My Heart on Fire reveals her strange and dark sensibility
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Meet the youngest female pilot to fly around the world
Zara Rutherford offers young readers plenty of fun and adventure in I Flew Around the World, a dazzling account of her 32,000-mile journey
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Jordan Peterson wrestles with God – and the result is worth watching
The Canadian psychologist’s new book is a reading of the Old Testament and a paean to sacrifice. It’s riddling and dense, but engrossing
