Philip Roth’s (1933 – 2018) novels are highly autobiographical. His ex-wives and former girlfriends also wrote books about the American author. As an interested reader, you think you know all there is to know before you start reading the recently published biography. Yet Philip Roth, the biography is an astonishing, at times even bewildering pageturner. […]
literature
The White Tiger drilled into perpetual servitude
Balram Halwai is not a sympathetic protagonist. Yet the narrative voice of The White Tiger is so powerful that you continue to read with fascination. Aravind Adiga’s debut novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. Thanks to a recent film adaptation, the book is now once again in the spotlight. Author Adiga has Indian […]
Amusing and entertaining science fiction novel
If you thought that science fiction stories can’t be funny it is high time you dive into the world of CD Warhurst. His latest novel The Planet Baggers is one of the most amusing and entertaining books I have ever read. The Planet Baggers has the most improbable antihero as its protagonist: Colin, a single […]
Moral consequences of artificial intelligence
If robots take over people’s work, what will they do with their spare time? Ian McEwan (1948) shows how artificial intelligence would influence our daily lives in his fascinating new what-if-novel Machines Like Me. The British master story teller discusses advancing technology from several angles and concludes that artificial intelligence will have many ethical and […]
If Beale Street Could Talk brings Baldwin back in the spotlights
The successful Hollywood movie If Beale Street Could Talk brings James Baldwin (1924-1987) back in the centre of the spotlights. The Afro-American author and social critic wrote many essays about racial relations in the sixties and seventies. His work was imitated when Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Between the world and me in 2015. That pamphlet resembles […]
Love is a better motivator than guilt
If an essay bundle obsesses your mind for weeks, it must be well-written. Jonathan Franzen (1958) communicates the urgency of his message in a refined way. The American author has not chosen for the detour of the novel (The corrections (2001), Freedom (2010), Purity (2015)), but he addresses his audience in a direct way. In […]