States of Play: How Sportswashing took over Football by Miguel Delaney - Admirably thorough, depressingly persuasive
Author argues convincingly that soccer’s Faustian bargain with big moneyed interests is undermining its sporting competitiveness and moral integrity
Shattered by Hanif Kureishi: Darkly funny insights into the indignities and anguish caused by sudden incapacitation
Along the way, the author, who became paralysed after a fall in late 2022, laments the ‘North Korea of the mind’ he believes young writers impose upon themselves
Knife by Salman Rushdie review: living to tell the tale of being saved by love
Knife is surprisingly upbeat for a book about being stabbed in the head
A People’s History of Football by Mickaël Correia: Making the case for the sport as a progressive social force
This an enjoyable highlights reel of stores from From Barcelona to Brazil that show why football has a special legitimacy as the people’s game
Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan: comic writer to culture warrior
This book of two distinct parts is a discomfitting read because the author clearly hasn’t worked through his issues
The New York Times went to see Andrew Scott’s one-man Chekhov play. This is its verdict
Theatre: What artistic benefit is derived from having a single actor play all the parts?
The Hour After Happy Hour by Mary O’Donoghue: stories about Irish emigrant lives and those left behind
A playful enjoyment in words and language permeates this collection
The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt: A compelling storyteller but an uncompelling protagonist
The wife of the unassuming, forgettable Bob leaves him for his best friend. And who could blame her?
Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong: admirably ambitious for a debut novel
Author’s first work of long-form fiction follows her 2022 short story collection, How to Gut a Fish
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery: coming-of-age tale of Warhol Factory girl
There is little of the freewheeling playfulness that animated the author’s impressive 2019 short story collection, Show Them a Good Time
The Call of the Tribe by Mario Vargas Llosa: A solid political primer but lacking in fresh ideas
Author writes chapters on liberal thinkers from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek but his fear of tyranny has blinded him to the benefits of state intervention
Run and Hide: psychodrama of social mobility
Book review: Pankaj Mishra on the slippery subject of class in vivid portraits of three Indian men
A Time Outside This Time: Anxious meditation on ‘fake news’ is deeply unoriginal
Book review: Amitava Kumar’s novel strains a bit too hard to speak to the moment
Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell: Bric-a-brac of ordinary life
Book review: These neatly crafted short stories find poetry in the rituals of domesticity
Cleanness: Moral fastidiousness and S&M in city of Sofia
Garth Greenwell’s explicit novel of interpersonal chemistry and homosexuality engages