The rise of romantasy: Escapist books become more popular as real-world challenges loom
Reality biting? There’s an antidote for that: a tall, dark, handsome stranger from a romantasy novel.
Crime fiction: Megan Abbott, Elmore Leonard, Luke Beirne, Paul Vidich, Karin Slaughter and K Anis Ahmed
Tim MacGabhann: ‘I had a fairly mad recurrence of withdrawal symptoms’
A Year in the Woods; An Irishman in Northern Mesopotamia; and The Papers of Maurice FitzGerald
Poem of the Week: Lack of Sleep
A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis – Five decades as wandering witness to the world
Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman: An engaging attempt to get us to change the world
Genocide in Gaza: three new books take stock
SHORT STORIES
Book Club
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POETRY
‘I wanted to do something radical’: Wendy Erskine on her debut novel, which deals with class, rape and parenting
By Martin Doyle
Albion by Anna Hope: Shades of Brideshead in this fine novel about inherited wealth and difficult family dynamics
By John Boyne
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick: Chilling insight into the birth of modern China
By Jessica Traynor
Heading to the Fleadh: Festival, cultural revival and Irish traditional music, 1951-1969 – Professing the power of ‘festival time’
By Siobhán Long
Inside the Stargazer’s Palace by Violet Moller: A front seat at the birth of science
By Rachel Ashcroft
Did nobody actually read this book before it went to print?: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
By Kevin Power
Reading Ulysses: Splendid literature that can suck the life out of you and your family
By Maggie Armstrong
