Tales my father didn’t tell me
Hanif Kureishi's My Ear At His Heart is a beguiling and complex tale of fact, fiction and family tensions, says Peter Preston.
Writers against… the weather
Arguing against war is easy, writes Ian Jack. Fighting climate change means making sacrifices.
Q&A
Michèle Roberts, novelist.
Poetic licence
Jad Adams enjoys Diana Souhami's Wild Girls, a jolly romp through the rebellious life of Natalie Barney, heiress and seductress.
The technocrat of massacre
Chris Petit applauds David Cesarani's scrupulously objective portrait of Adolf Eichmann, a man 'rotten from the inside out'.
Celluloid dreams
His best-selling novel was 'soon to be a major movie' and DM Thomas anticipated fame and riches. Two decades later, after many false starts and painful setbacks, the cameras have yet to roll.
Pretentious? Lui?
For Ever Godard is lavishly illustrated and utterly unreadable. At long last Jean-Luc Godard gets the critics he deserves, says Peter Conrad.
Those gorgeous Garmans
Wild, promiscuous and dazzling: the Garman siblings were art connoisseurs who also collected famous lovers. Cressida Connolly tells the story of a family love affair with Bohemia in The Rare and the Beautiful.
The life and crimes of the Holocaust mastermind
David Cesarini's gripping, meticulously researched book explodes many myths surrounding Adolf Eichmann.
Many a good tune…
Toby Faber conjures up five violins, one cello and a genius in his biography of Stradivarius.
Voices from the American confessional
At a dark hour for America, Studs Terkel goes looking for shoots of optimism in Hope Dies Last.
A side order of couscous
Giles Milton's remarkable tale of 18th-century slavery, White Gold, is a hidden nugget from the treasure house of history, says Tim Ecott.
Gilded pawn
John Freely follows a Turkish prince through Renaissance Europe in Jem Sultan. What a shame his sources are so bland, says Kathryn Hughes.
Metamorphosis
Sometimes a life seems created for an artist after death. Michael Hofmann isn't sure what Nicholas Murray has contributed to our understanding with his biography of Kafka.
‘I’ve always been perverse’
At 15, a Surrealist before her time, Dorothea Tanning's paintings horrified her family. Now, sculptor, poet and, at 93, first-time novelist, the widow of Max Ernst reveals why moving on is better than painting like Chagall