‘While the terrible pain of speech is made clear, this book ultimately reminds us that we must not be silenced.’
‘Now more than ever environmentalists need to remember what it’s like to write for that real world.’
Hoa Nguyen on why Joanne Kyger’s On Time is the best book of 2016.
‘Time is a rubber band, and in a single sentence, ghosts and alternative worlds superimpose’
‘Much like Tolkien’s, admittedly vaster, legendarium, Lewis’s world is exquisitely conceived.’
‘The beauty of The Idiot lies in its opposition to closed systems.’
‘The novel submits to an internalized discipline: it is an observation machine’
His is a force more penetrative than all the bogus machismo of Hemingway.
‘Hunt writes with brio, the visceral often blooming into the mystical.’
‘New poetic expressions can still emerge and evolve in Hebrew – an ancient and almost prehistoric language, with its grumbling sound’
Dave Haysom on why Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling is the best book of 1766.
‘Johnson is now a ghost of history; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but I can’t let him disappear.’
‘David Grossman is a writer who speaks to the heart, and this is his masterpiece.’
‘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)’
