Who loves the sun?
Also this week: Sweet summer reading and why we need immigrants.
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age
Literature is booming. Literary culture needs to catch up.
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If literature is dead, at least the funeral is well attended
And Dostoevsky is here too!
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The romantasy infatuation
The best-selling genre in publishing combines magical worlds, steamy sex and unfortunate prose.
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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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Geoff Dyer’s English journey
The writer on family, class and life lessons from a decade in America.
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We are all Mrs Dalloway now
For Virginia Woolf, stream of consciousness was a method. Now, it’s a way of life.
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The revenge of the young male novelist
Can good writing solve our crisis of masculinity?
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Sharing a bed with Edmund White
Epic sexual promiscuity was the key to White’s literary output.
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The epic of James Joyce
How Richard Ellmann’s capacious 1959 biography shaped modern life writing.
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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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There is no contemporary fiction
The novel promises an ending. But world events will not be so neatly contained.
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A cold childhood
My unheated home wasn’t a temporary discomfort. The chill got into my bones.
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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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Mark Twain and the limits of biography
The great American writer witnessed the forging of his nation – but Ron Chernow’s portrait cannot see beyond its subject.
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Who was the real DH Lawrence?
A BBC series considers the novelist's three great themes: sex, nature and class.
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The lost boys of North London
Leo Robson’s family saga, set during the 2012 Olympics, is both a comedy and a study of grief.
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Edward St Aubyn’s comedy of horrors
The Patrick Melrose novels and his other works are clearly by the same writer – but produce wildly different results.
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Curzio Malaparte, the Proust of violence
The Italian writer was drawn to fascism – but became an unsparing chronicler of the carnage of war.
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Jane Gardam’s dispatches from the past
The late British writer produced novels haunted by uprootings, death, and the twilight of the British Empire.
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