The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brian

Posted 2:29pm Sunday 29th September 2013

The opening sentence of this book describes a brutal murder. An old man is first knocked down with a bicycle pump and then beaten to death with a spade. The one-legged, unnamed narrator, however, doesn’t want to explain his crime right away; more important to him is his friendship with John Divney, Read more...

Free Will

Posted 4:47pm Sunday 18th August 2013

Sam Harris explains, in 83 pages, the illogic of free will. Our society functions on the assumption that we all have it: without free will, any claim to justice, morality, personal accomplishment, intimate relationships (and virtually anything else we care about deeply) seems ridiculous. Free will Read more...

The House of the Dead

Posted 2:29pm Sunday 11th August 2013

Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead, published in 1861, explores life and death in the confines of a 19th-century Siberian prison. The book is based on the journal Dostoyevsky wrote while in prison for crimes of political and religious dissent – namely, for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Read more...

The Violent Bear it Away

Posted 4:45pm Sunday 28th July 2013

Francis Marion Tarwater was born in the wreck of the car crash that killed his mother and grandmother and drove his father to suicide. Adopted by Rayber, his school-teacher uncle, baby Francis is oblivious to the devastation he was born into. But crazy great-uncle Tarwater decides he need someone to Read more...

Sweet Tooth

Posted 3:59pm Sunday 21st July 2013

This is the sex issue, so I decided to write about a sexy spy book. It is 1972. Serena Frome is the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, groomed by her much older lover to join the British Secret Services in the patriarchal ranks of MI5. Serena is considered something of a freak of Read more...

The Magic of Reality

Posted 8:23pm Sunday 14th July 2013

“Reality is everything that exists. That sounds straight forward, doesn’t it? Actually, it isn’t.” Thus begins Dawkins’ introduction to science for young people. I didn’t realise this was a young adults’ book until I started reading it, but, being an eager yet largely ignorant admirer of science, I Read more...

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Posted 6:05pm Sunday 7th July 2013

Mary Shelley, at the age of 21, published what is arguably the first science fiction novel; a fantasy story with a scientific rather than supernatural explanation. Shelley had apparently heard of recent experiments to “reanimate” corpses by making them jerk around with electric shocks, and dreamed Read more...

Mefisto by John Banville

Posted 5:49pm Sunday 14th April 2013

What would you sacrifice to have everything you ever wanted? What happens if you sell your soul, but there is no afterlife to suffer in? John Banville recreates Goethe’s Mephistopheles in twentieth-century Ireland, bringing the old religious parable into a modern, secular setting, where God and the Read more...

The Plague

Posted 4:23pm Sunday 10th March 2013

Rats are dying. Arriving home one night, Dr Bernard Rieux witnesses a sick rat rupturing and spurting blood from its mouth. Soon thousands are dead, burning in piles in the streets. Dr Rieux acknowledges the dead rats with intrigue. Then his door-porter dies of a peculiar fever, with a terrible Read more...

Monsieur Linh and his Child

Posted 4:25pm Sunday 23rd September 2012

Monsieur Linh is the only person who knows his name, because everybody who used to know it is dead. He arrives by ship from an unnamed country in Indo-China to France, clutching a small suitcase of meagre possessions, and his new-born granddaughter, Sang diû, who weighs less than the suitcase. His Read more...