Adam Mars-Jones

Gurnaik Johal​’s admirable first novel starts with a piece of miraculous regeneration. Satnam, a Londoner, visits Punjab for the first time since childhood to scatter his grandmother’s ashes (this is East Punjab, on the Indian side of the border, predominantly Sikh). He looks down into the old well on the family farm – dry for many decades – and is surprised to see...

At one point​ in Kiran Desai’s new novel the heroine, Sonia Shah, sets out to write a journalistic sketch of the Indian kebab, ‘massaged, marinated, oiled, spoiled, pampered, pompous, romantic’, but finds the subject expanding relentlessly. She researches the tabak maaz of Kashmir, the Afghani reshmi, the pathar kebab, ‘cooked on a hot stone to absorb the flavour of...

Alan Garner​’s new book is a patchwork of memoirs and essays, taking its title from the offcuts of tapestry that weavers (like some of his forebears) would take home with them. His heyday has been a long one. Garner’s first book for children, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, published in 1960, has a place on the shelves and in the memories of generations of readers, while his...

Here​ are two new novels, both highly accomplished, which diverge so sharply that they produce an eerie effect of symmetry. Audition is a slightly wayward choice for the title of Katie Kitamura’s new book, hinting at the narrator’s profession (she’s an actress preparing a leading role for a play off-Broadway) but not at its relevant aspects. In the first half of the book...

Not many​ people born in 1929 are still productive, but Dominique Fernandez, winner of the 1982 Goncourt Prize for the novel Dans la main de l’ange, turned 95 a little before his new memoir, Les Trois Femmes de ma vie, appeared – the three women are his grandmother, mother and wife. It wasn’t even the first book he published last year, but followed the novel Un jeune homme...