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Reviews & Culture

Hilary Mantel reminded us that people make history

The interplay of human agency and overarching historical process

04 October 2022

Author Kurt Vonnegut leans against a wall as someone with a camera films him for the documentary Unstuck In Time

Reviews & Culture

The horror and humour that made Kurt Vonnegut

New documentary on the author’s extraordinary life

01 August 2022

Reviews & Culture

Why Sally Rooney’s boycott matters so much to Israel

Rooney’s refusal to let an Israeli publisher translate her new book provoked furore—revealing Israel’s fear over Palestine solidarity

15 October 2021

Reviews & Culture

The Testaments—a rich and complex sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

This follow-up novel has been a long time coming. It’s grim, but also exciting and never straightforward

17 September 2019

Obituaries

Toni Morrison, 1931—2019

Toni Morrison, one of the greatest writers of the 21st century, died last week.

13 August 2019

Features

Socialist Worker’s 1989 interview with Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses

This was the last interview Salman Rushdie gave before he went into hiding. We re-publish it as an important document from the time

21 September 2018

Features

Islamophobia, Free Speech and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses

Hassan Mahamdallie looks at what was behind the anger at Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, and how a new form of racism flourished in its wake

21 September 2018

Features

Orwell was heading leftward along the Road to Wigan Pier

On the 80th anniversary of George Orwell’s classic The Road to Wigan Pier, Simon Basketter looks at his account of working class life and the left

07 March 2017

Reviews & Culture

Communists and cops—the radical roots of Henning Mankell’s noir

The late Henning Mankell’s Wallander stories built on social realism—but the genre’s roots lie in a Marxist critique of Sweden, says Tomáš Tengely-Evans

13 October 2015

Reviews & Culture

The dark heart of West Germany

Günter Grass, novelist, poet and human rights campaigner, died in April aged 87. He was called the conscience of Germany, or more accurately West Germany. But at the heart of both the writer and the state lay a dark secret that has haunted his reputation. He was born in 1927 in the “free” city of...

28 April 2015

Obituaries

Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927-2014

Mike Gonzalez looks at the significance of the anti-imperialist giant of Latin American literature who died last week

21 April 2014

Obituaries

Lessing’s legacy

For a writer as prolific as she was – she wrote more than 50 books – that’s not surprising. This unevenness was also, to some significant degree, the product of her political choices over nearly 70 years. Lessing grew up in the profoundly racist society of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and her early reaction to...

06 February 2014

Socialist Review Archive

The tragedy of Salman Rushdie

The controversy about Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1989 revealed the hypocrisy of the ruling class and stoked Islamophobia. But, argues Gareth Jenkins, Rushdie's new memoir reveals someone who has travelled a long way from his former identification with the oppressed

01 November 2012

Socialist Review Archive

Dickens the radical

The great Victorian novelist Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago this month. Gareth Jenkins looks back at his life and work

01 February 2012

Obituaries

Long distance running: Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010)

The novels of Alan Sillitoe rejoice in working class defiance. John Newsinger writes about a brilliant writer with a sad political trajectory.

01 June 2010

Obituaries

Edward Upward – 1903-2009

Edward Upward, the last of the 1930s generation of left-wing British writers, has died at the age of 105. It is astonishing to think that someone who was in his late 20s when the Wall Street Crash heralded the Great Depression should live on to see an equally deep crisis begin to convulse the system once again.

01 March 2009

Socialist Review Archive

Interview: Sara Paretsky

Fighting racism and injustice shaped Sara Paretsky as a crime writer. She talks to Sarah Ensor about her work, the Iraq war and the US elections.

01 April 2008

Socialist Review Archive

Ronan Bennett: A sense of impending tragedy

Writer Ronan Bennett talks to Shaun Doherty about the lead up to the Iraq war, the ignorance of New Labour and being a political writer

01 March 2008

Socialist Review Archive

Interview: Changing society, imagining the future

Matter is the seventh science fiction novel by Iain Banks about "the Culture". He talks to Patrick Ward about writing, utopias, and New Labour.

01 February 2008

Socialist Review Archive

The dentist and the story that shook Egypt

Dr Alaa Al Aswany's first published novel, The Yacoubian Building, provoked fury from the Egyptian regime, but has captured the imagination of the Egyptian public. Gehan Shabaan asks the bestselling author about his work and the film adaptation coming to Britain this month.

01 September 2007

Obituaries

Obituary: Ousmane Sembene

Ousmane Sembène was one of those rare people whose death feels like a personal loss even to those who did not know him. We have lost a great mind.

01 July 2007

Reviews & Culture

Rights of Passage

The rise of imperialism in the 19th century was reflected in the literature of the period. Gareth Jenkins examines the contradictions of empire's novelists.

01 December 2006

Socialist Review Archive

Interview: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'My book is not just about people thrown into a war where we watch them die. It is about people who have full lives and how war changes them'. The award winning author of Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, talks to Charlie Kimber about her new novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, set during the Biafran War.

01 October 2006

Reviews & Culture

From One Struggle to Another

From colonialism to nationhood and capitalism, Mike Gonzalez looks at the evolution of Latin American literature and its inspirations.

01 April 2006

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