Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris (Gollancz, 2011). Dead Reckoning is the latest novel in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, or Southern Vampire Mysteries, series. At book number eleven, it...
Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times, updated paperback ed. (New York and London: Verso, 2011). The philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has put reviewers of his latest book, Living in...
Lisa Isherwood and Mark Jordan, Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid, SCM Press, 2010. Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid was a pioneer in the field...
This weekend, Meghan Cox Gurdon opined in The Wall Street Journal that the current generation of young adult fiction is 'too dark' for readers; 'So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and...
The infamous Soviet labor camps are described by one word - GULag - an acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies. Gulag is one of those words which everyone knows and...
Feminism FOR REAL, edited by Jessica Yee, Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, 2011 Mainstream feminist activism and academics, even in the 21st century, have continued to be overly-invested in...
Damon Galgut’s novel, In a Strange Room, did not win the Man Booker Prize last October. It lacked the novelty of Emma Donoghue’s powerhouse, Room, the historical significance of Andrea Levy’s...
Su Tong, Madwoman on the Bridge, Transworld Publishers, 2008. Su Tong is a Chinese author who has gained international recognition for his work, recently being nominated for the Man Booker...
Adam Kostko, Awkwardness, O books, 2010 It's a sign of a good piece of cultural criticism that it makes you re-evaluate a piece of art you'd previously discarded as uninteresting or even unpleasant....
Alex von Tunzelmann, Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean , Henry Holt and Co, 2011. Americans remain fascinated by the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the fall of 1962, American...