By Maria Bregman Every year, the Booker Prize longlist offers a map of where the English-language novel is right now and, perhaps, where it’s headed.…
By Maria Bregman There is a particular kind of British comedy, a strain of satire perfected in smoky panel shows and righteous stand-up specials, that…
By Maria Bregman Every generation is given Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons as a kind of literary consolation prize. It is presented as a masterpiece of balance, a…
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…