Kudos
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Best Book of 1900: The Autobiography of Dr William Henry Johnson
Jennifer Kabat
‘Johnson is now a ghost of history; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but I can’t let him disappear.’
Best Book of 2008: To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
Lily Dunn
‘David Grossman is a writer who speaks to the heart, and this is his masterpiece.’
Sweet William: A Memoir of Old Horse, by John Hawkes | Best Book of 1993
Linda H. Davis
‘Plunged inside the skin of the horse, I felt his sensory burdens, sufferings and fears: his keen sensitivity to sound, smell and touch (even the weight of a saddle)’
Best Book of 2000: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
Anne Meadows
‘It is the novel I have read which best expresses the honest and sad truth of art: that it is often produced in precarity and performed in near silence, but that it can also redeem a life.’
Best Book of 2008: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Mika Taylor
‘Rivka Galchen’s debut novel is one of my favourites from the last few years.’
Best Book of 1943: Love In A Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
‘Eileen Chang writes perfectly for the romantic in an unromantic and unrelenting world.’
Best Book of 2015: Letters Against the Firmament
Max Porter
‘So much good poetry is being written in and about and for this ghastly time. I cling to it.’
Best Book of 1967: Ice by Anna Kavan
Eli Goldstone
‘What a writer, and what a vision. What a perfect book to read in preparation for the end of the world.’
Best Book of 1941: Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher
Harriet Moore
‘This book is about yearning for the Sunday nights of childhood, or dreams; it is a meditation on hunger in all its forms.’
Best Book of 1994: The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller
Eliza Robertson
‘You'd have to have lived through that bleakness. You'd have to know with your body, your hands, your eyes, your mouth, the weight of that fear – how it’s not strictly describable.’
Best book of 1983: The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Sophie Mackintosh
‘After 2016 I’m done with sentimentality, and it’s hard to think of a less sentimental book than The Piano Teacher, objectively a masterpiece, subjectively a book that changed my life.’
Best book of 1964: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
Lisa McInerney
‘In days of such human cruelty and pettiness and stupidity, we need reminding that we are all capable of savage compassion as well as the contagion of hatred.’
Best book of 1947: L’Écume des Jours by Boris Vian
Xiaolu Guo
‘In those spring nights, I sat by barbecue stalls in the streets of Beijing, reading this novel under dim streetlights while eating lamb skewers.’
Best Book of 1965: Everything That Rises Must Converge
April Ayers Lawson
‘O’Conner has for me the effect of nailing and then blowing up one’s most casual illusions’
Best Book of 1970: Moominvalley in November
Aleksi Pöyry
‘This is a book I always return to for its melancholy tone, warm humour and psychological insight.’
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby: Best Book of 1995
Ted Robinson
‘It was a story about music and relationships.’
Words and the Word
Miranda France
Miranda France on how C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot redrafted the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
The Best Books of Any Year: Three Variations on Post-Truth
Astrid Alben
‘2016 is almost over but the impact of this year’s political events will reverberate around the globe for decades.’
Best Book of 1991: Mao II by Don DeLillo
Colin Barrett
‘The ultimate goal of each act of art, each work of terror, is to demolish the old, incumbent reality, and create a new one.’
Best Book of 1993: Written on the Body
Melissa Febos
‘Influences imprint themselves on our consciousness as light does a photograph, or trauma the psyche’
The Binoculars of Jah
Colin Grant
‘No matter how I attempted to interpret the email, it could only be read in one way: I was out of the Bunny Wailer club. Jah Bunny had put a curse on me.’
The Cleanse
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
‘There is foam on the sea of our blood. It is the foam of history. We are the survivors, we say.’
The Neighborhood
Kelly Magee
‘Can bad mothers be taught to be good? Or maybe, can we be incentivized to bond? To love?’
The Cult of the Hindu Cowboy
Snigdha Poonam
‘The Hindu cowboy accords to the cow the holiest status in his imagination: of mother. It is his duty to protect her honour; it is his privilege to kill for her.’
First Sentence: Javier Zamora
Javier Zamora
‘Immigration has become a physical thing, like a tumor inside us, between us.’
When Denmark Criminalised Kindness
Lisbeth Zornig Andersen
‘We now know that it is a criminal offence to help refugees in distress.’
Five Things Right Now: Cynan Jones
Cynan Jones
‘A pair of seagulls. I say a pair. They might just be good friends.’
Traffic
Rae Armantrout
‘Music needs silence / more than silence needs music.’ New poetry by Rae Armantrout.
The Fairytale
Jennifer Kabat
‘In Hollin Hills, we believed our flatware could change the world.’ Jennifer Kabat on the intersection of modernist architecture and espionage.
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘What future youth movement might capture them, those international participants in virtual hunts?’
Peace Shall Destroy Many
Miriam Toews
‘It creates deep-seated wells of rage that find no release.’
Miriam Toews on pacifism in Mennonite communities.
