Re: Emily.

It was hard to take her seriously. It was hard to take her any other way. It was just plain hard to take her, most of the time.

Her show was going to start soon. It was going to be a big success. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and yet it felt familiar. Everyone in the family knew what to do. We were not part of the show ourselves but we had a script.

As lockdown returns, beware of the idea that solitude and introversion are the path to a ‘true’ self

Nabokov, Bellow, Hitchens and other heroes

(1) There’s a sign

it says
HANG THE REPIST
it means

the small flame of our candle
simply melts white wax
as we walk streets
by painted temples

same as he did
when he took the child
she looking for rainbow puddles
friends to play with, no time for prayers
only just old enough to say
four years of coaxing consonants to say

I want to go home now. 

Her fractured body found car park cold
family loudly told, we will find them we will.
They don’t.

What happens when a poet and scientist talk about the star at the centre of our solar system

Shortly before winning the Man Booker Prize 2016, Paul Beatty sat down with Neil Denny at Watersones Piccadilly in London to talk about his novel The Sellout

Revisiting Patrick Hamilton's 20th century classic

Emma Cline's new book The Girls explores the infamous cult through the prism of his followers

Islamic State's absolutism has antecedents in 20th Century communism and fascism

More than 90 years after it was published, The Great Gatsby has a more powerful grip on the imagination than ever. But what exactly is it about F Scott Fitzgerald’s American masterpiece that keeps us coming back? Sarah Churchwell spoke to Little Atoms about where the book came from and why it means so much