By Maria Bregman A holiday is the perfect time to read a book you might otherwise put down. Not a light beach read, but something…

By Maria Bregman There is a particular kind of literary reverence reserved for the ‘crisis of faith’ novel. We are invited, with hushed solemnity, to…

By Maria Bregman Not long ago, I watched a celebrated academic, a man whose books had once reshaped his field, struggle to share his screen…

By Maria Bregman Reading Siân Hughes’s Booker-longlisted debut, Pearl, I was reminded of my great-aunt and the lethal comfort of a good story. The novel has…

By Maria Bregman Åsa Ericsdotter’s novel, Phase 3, is a book for a world that has lost the stomach for such work. It arrives packaged as…

By Maria Bregman I remember my first trip to Island. I was nineteen, on a layover, and my impression of the place was formed in…

By Maria Bregman I remember standing in a Gibert Jeune in Paris some years ago, faced with a wall of Michel Houellebecq’s work. The covers…

By Maria Bregman I remember the summer of 2017 with a peculiar clarity. Not for the political upheavals or any personal milestones, but for the…

By Maria Bregman I was at a book launch in Bloomsbury a few years back, the kind where the white wine is warm and the…