Adam Mars-Jones

As seen​ by the English-speaking world, the Spanish Civil War was a screen on which certain images could be projected, images of harsh sunlight, moral clarity and sacrifice. It was an emblematic, almost allegorical war and a test case for conscience, a political crisis so thoroughly appropriated that the Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse hardly needed to point out that its...

Devotees​ of the gritty police procedural must brace themselves for shocks when they enter the world of Fred Vargas, whose fine detective stories have won her three International Daggers. In her new novel, Temps glaciaires, a man is brought in for interrogation in connection with four murders. He is offered wine, and not just any wine but the 2004 white that Commandant Danglard sources from...

It’s typical​ of Kazuo Ishiguro’s low-key, misdirecting approach to the business of fiction that, although the book contains such creatures as dragons and pixies, the buried giant of his new novel’s title should be an analogy explained only a few pages before the narrative ends. The revelation comes as a micro-shock or nano-coup, a slow burn converging on a fizzle....

Daniel Kehlmann​’s new novel, F, takes the risk of starting with a set piece. The first sentence runs: ‘Years later, long since fully grown and each of them enmeshed in his own particular form of unhappiness, none of Arthur Friedland’s sons could recall whose idea it had actually been to go to the hypnotist that afternoon.’ The risk is that a memorable opening...

My father​’s background in congregationalist Denbighshire was teetotalitarian: his own father took only one alcoholic drink in his life, and that was (fair play) a glass of champagne at my parents’ wedding reception. I imagine him choking it down as if it were sparkling rat poison. The early prohibition left traces: not having a taste for beer, Dad rather disapproved of pubs,...