“... and misbehaviour. Oddly, the reverse is true. Brookner’s subject is the isolation of the self, unsupported by family affection, the gratifications of art or work, the fulfilment of romantic love, or the promise of religion. Above all, she insists that her readers consider the daunting consequences of age. ‘What courage it must take to grow ...”

“... buccaneer capitalists and the waning of political power in the Thatcher years. The Century of the Self (2002) traced the way in which, during the course of the 20th century, Freud’s notion of the unconscious was recruited for a consumerist model of society in which politics became a matter of tapping into people’s desires. Two years later, The Power of ...”

“... illuminates both Fiona and Emily. In the novella Emily has her troubles, but is not reduced to the self-pitying, hated figure she becomes in the second half, in which her daughter remorselessly hates her. The war, hitherto excluded, is central to the second half. A brief biography of the real Alfred Tayler: ‘a vigorous and healthy man, was wounded badly in ...”

“... also unaware that Netanyahu’s government has never recognised the Palestinian right to national self-determination and statehood in any part of Palestine, even though this right has been affirmed repeatedly by the UN Security Council (e.g. Resolution 242 in 1967 and Resolution 1515 in 2003) and by the International Court of Justice (in 2004). The ...”

“... the list of writers who have introduced Saki’s work: Noël Coward, A.N. Wilson, Tom Sharpe, Will Self. Coward’s use of Sakian humour, though, is constrained by his urgent pursuit of the next punchline; Sharpe’s has a seaside postcard quality that has dated more in forty years than Saki’s has in a hundred. Saki is often said to ring through the novels ...”

“... Horned Man (2002) gave us an absent-minded professor whose confidence in the unknowability of the self masked deep corruption; Seven Lies (2006) offered a damaged liar mixed up in international intrigue. The book of Lasdun’s that I recalled most intensely while reading The Fall Guy was his 2013 memoir Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. It ...”

“... and gets pistol-whipped outside a nightclub by the son of a Duma deputy. There is a feud with a self-aggrandising academic rival, and a love triangle. Many of the characters’ romantic dilemmas, jokes and even literary references will be familiar to readers of Gessen’s first novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men. Published in 2008, the year in which A ...”

“... because the narrator is so much more earnest than those in her previous books. She’s curiously self-censoring – thinking of her bottom as her ‘sit-me-down-upon’, and unable to bring herself to even think, let alone utter, the Trumpian maxim ‘grab ’em by the ––’ – but polite enough to clarify any potential ambiguities of thought ...”

“... was trying, as Scholar says, ‘to show his readers that the language they spoke was not a self-evident set of meanings … but a process of making and remaking meaning in which they could choose to play a fully conscious and active part’. This is Scholar’s goal too, but the words he concentrates on have a quite special life, and this is where his ...”

“... apart.For the woman, Greek is ‘a language as cold and hard as a pillar of ice … a supremely self-sufficient language’. That self-sufficiency is captured in a lesson on ‘a third voice’, neither active nor passive, ‘which we call the middle voice’, expressing ‘an action that relates to the subject ...”

“... one’ – a subject about which Chaudhuri has written. In fact, he stages an act of fictional self-erasure when his narrator becomes so involved in Berlin that he loses his sense of self. He becomes a conduit, open to the intimations of the past within Berlin’s present:I don’t feel anxious because the streets are ...”

“... she remarks, ‘above the Black and Brown, but below the White. Obedient. Docile. Abject.’ If self-hatred and status consciousness aren’t enough to keep such a buffer in place, the police will do it: a cop in a prominent hate crime investigation ‘has been promoting anti-Chinese T-shirts on Facebook: “Covid-19 imported virus from Chy-na”. I don’t ...”

“... In Lotto Britain, the Good Life is the life they have on Love Island, an endless parade of self-tanning and nail extensions, gym sessions and Prosecco.When the Sunday Times Rich List was first published, in 1989, the person at number one was the queen. At the time, she was worth £5.2 billion, and it seemed logical, in a farcical, doilies-and-teacups ...”

“... innocence; the materialist values of the Western Bürgertum (Jewish and Gentile) represented its self-alienated antithesis.’ Roth’s admiration for the community he’d rejected grew to mirror his contempt for the would-be assimilated Jews of the Western capitals, though he was himself just such a Jew. The Ostjuden came to embody an endangered world ...”

“... performed, and were pleased that a job that had to be done was done so well. National pride and self-confidence were renewed. I find this conclusion no less extraordinary than I found the concluding paragraphs of the Franks Committee Report, which altogether failed to engage with the substance of what had preceded them. Hastings and Jenkins produce ...”