I have always loved the small, delicious friction that happens when two books—separated by time, geography or reputation—begin to argue with each other on the page. Pairing an overlooked novel with a contemporary reply is one of my favourite ways to read: it sharpens themes, exposes blind...
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Reading Guides
I first encountered a mid-century novel that had been quietly collecting dust...
Interviews
Interviewing a translator is one of the quiet pleasures of literary work: you...
Deep Reads
It begins, often, with a fragment: a single sheet of paper, a smudged date in...
Reading Guides
I love setting myself a small, intense reading mission: seven days, one region,...
I still remember the first time I held a book from a press I’d never heard of before. It wasn’t a polished hardback with a glossy jacket and celebrity blurbs — it was a slim paperback from Galvanised Books, the kind of title that looks like it...
I’ve sat across from authors in bookshop backrooms, over coffee, on panels and through pixelated video calls. Across formats and temperaments one thing becomes quickly clear: the questions we ask shape what we get. Ask for a sales pitch and...
I have a soft spot for charity shops and secondhand stalls—their mismatched shelves and cardboard boxes feel like invitations. Over the years I’ve learned to read those murmured voices of books: the cracked spines that have been loved, the...
When I think about the twentieth-century novels that have stayed with me longest, they’re almost always the ones that arrived quietly into my life—pulled from a mis-shelved pile in a charity shop, recommended by a bookseller who could not be...