A literary and psychoanalytical first cousin to the Bombay Laughing Club: a book about laughter and the unconscious, with philosophy, poetry, memoir and the tragi-comedy of clowns thrown in ... read more
A Yorkshire childhood, remembered in lockdown, collides with immense global forces. Hunters in the Snow, Hildyard's previous novel - her first - was excellent.
The author is a US journalist who, in 2016, accompanied an Afghan driver determined to leave his country for the West. It is an extraordinary account of how this ghastly odyssey works from t... read more
Perhaps the most high-profile political prisoner in the Arab world, Alaa has spent most of the last seven years in prison in Egypt. These essays were smuggled, compiled by friends and relati... read more
The author moved to Japan aged 21, immersing herself in language and culture with such success that she is now a literary translator. Her route there was by no means straightforward; this bo... read more