Book reviews

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy.

It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists ascent, a prelude to fame.

When Athena Greydon’s fiancé ends their engagement, she has no choice but to move into the Spite House she recklessly bought him as a wedding gift. Which is a problem, for several reasons: The house, originally built as a brick middle finger to the neighbors, is only ten feet wide. Her ex’s home is literally attached to hers. And Dr. Matthew Vine the Freaking Third—AKA the uptight, judgy jerk who convinced his younger brother to leave her—is living on her other side, only a four-foot alley away.

Imagine a race of immortal beings possessed of seemingly limitless superhuman abilities. Once worshipped as gods, this fantastic group left Earth to explore the stars after warring with the Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons for supremacy over humankind. They are the Eternals, and they are just one part of a cosmic mythology. Their opposites - the Deviants - also secretly populate the Earth, while the towering cosmic entities that created both - the Celestials - are fated to arrive and judge our planet. This is but the beginning of an epic cosmology of gods and men that sprang forth from the limitless imagination of Jack "King" Kirby, the co-creator of Captain America, the X-Men, the Avengers and more.

"The Book of Humans" tells the story of how we became the creatures we are today, bestowed with the unique ability to investigate what makes us who we are. Illuminated by the latest scientific discoveries, it is a thrilling compendium of what unequivocally fixes us as animals, and reveals how we are extraordinary among them.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger - these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamin Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.

They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity.

Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift. Until it became a prison... But can a student stand against an empire?

An incendiary novel from award-winning author R.F. Kuang about the power of language, the violence of colonialism, and the sacrifices of resistance.

Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to one another. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles ? based on her shoe size or her birthday ? and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

An insatiable rake falls for an eccentric genius. Too bad she’s his innocent bride, and he has vowed never to touch her.

Harriet “Harry” Lovelock lives a life of the mind, and she knows she can prove a theorem that has baffled male mathematicians for two centuries. But her stepmother wants her married and the swirl of the Season saps Harry’s energy and distracts her from her work. She has to put an end to the tedium of balls. Now. Full stop.

Thomas Drake, the Earl Drake, devotes himself to the pleasures of the flesh, even as he wrestles with his own demons and intractable problems. He needs to marry wealth, but could he ever be satisfied by just one woman?

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time when scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts who cluster around him can attest.

But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize.