Bloomsbury Publishing

Cover image for Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah: A multi-layered exploration of postcolonialism

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Theft is Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Described as ‘one of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers’ by the chairman of the Nobel committee, he continues to explore that theme through three young people in 1990s Zanzibar, his native country, whose lives become closely intertwined. He would […]

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Cover image for How to Gust a Fish by Sheila Armstrong

How to Gut a Fish by Sheila Armstrong: A striking, idiosyncratic collection

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Irish writer Sheila Armstrong’s debut collection How to Gut a Fish came with a glowing endorsement from Roddy Doyle which was part of the lure for me; that and the hint of the surreal in its blurb. The collection comprises fourteen stories, none more than twenty pages long, each very different from the other. As

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Cover image for People Like Them by Samira Sedira (transl Lara Vergnaud

People Like Them by Samira Sedira (transl. Lara Vergnaud): An unthinkable crime

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I wasn’t at all sure I’d read Samira Sedira’s People Like Them. It’s published under Bloomsbury’s crime imprint and I’m a crime watcher rather than a crime reader but it was the quote from Leila Slimani about its exploration of racism which made me think again. Based on a true story, Sedira’s novella is about

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Cover image for I Couldn't Love You More by Esther Freud

I Couldn’t Love You More by Esther Freud: Love, loss and motherhood

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I remember reading Hideous Kinky shortly after it was published, rewatching the film after getting back from Morocco, hoping to relive our trip, very different though it was from the one in Esther Freud’s novel which drew on her own childhood experiences. I’d also enjoyed her last novel, Mr Mac and Me, reviewed back in

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Cover image for Harvest by Georgina Harding

Harvest by Georgina Harding: ‘But this was only a moment of sunlight’

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Georgina Harding is one of those writers whose work I’ve long thought underrated. Her elegant, understated prose is meticulously crafted, never more so than in Harvest, her third novel about the Ashe family which echoes both The Gun Room and Land of the Living in its exploration of the legacy of war. The brooding that

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Cover image for Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan

Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan (transl. George Miller): The importance of saying thank you

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January seems to be Delphine de Vigan month for me. This time two years ago I reviewed the gripping Based on a True Story with which I was very impressed; last year’s Loyalties not so much. This year it’s Gratitude and I’m back to being a de Vigan fan. This brief of novellas explores ageing

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