Last great Romantic first great ModernTHE position of Johannes Brahms (1833-97), the last great Romantic composer, the first great Modern, continues to be debated …Wed Apr 02 1997 - 01:00
Tales from Firozsha Baag, by Rohinton Mistry (Faber, £6.99 in UK)Strong collection of eleven intersecting stories from the Toronto based Indian writer who has already been Booker shortlisted…Sat Mar 29 1997 - 00:00
Several Perceptions, by Angela Carter (Virago, £6.99 in UK)First published in 1968, this is Carter's third book and although it won a prize and confirms that her linguistic confidence …Sat Mar 29 1997 - 00:00
Looking war square in the faceELEMENTS of the fairy tale at its most sinister feature in the Hungarian writer Agota Kristofs strange wartime fictions, which…Sat Mar 29 1997 - 00:00
Pierce by starlightCONVENTIONALLY handsome, politely wary and apparently straight out of a mould respectfully marked for Cary Grant cloning purposes…Thu Mar 27 1997 - 00:00
Skill and daring are sometimes not enoughSOMETIMES skill and daring are not quite enoughThu Mar 27 1997 - 00:00
Reading the Irish Landscape, by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan (Town House, £18.99)This revised and extended edition of Frank Mitchell's book of the same title, which was first published in 1986, itself based…Sat Mar 22 1997 - 00:00
The Story of Archaeology, edited by Paul G. Bahn (Phoenix, £14.99 in UK)Attempting to tell the story of world archaeology within 240 pages sounds "improbably" ambitiousSat Mar 22 1997 - 00:00
Holy GrailIN this, the second part of Brimstone's ambitious production of Tankred Dorst's (with Ursula Ehler) adaption of the Arthurian…Sat Mar 22 1997 - 00:00
Ever the eager studentNATURALIST, former Professor of Quaternary Studies at Trinity College Dublin and former president of the Royal Irish Academy, …Thu Mar 20 1997 - 00:00
Dogs' best friendsTHE American short story has an apparently inexhaustible capacity to add to an already formidable traditionSat Mar 15 1997 - 00:00
The English Patient - A Screenplay, by Anthony Minghella (Methuen, £7.99 in UK).Destined to be one of the major box office successes of 1997, Minghella's film version of Michael Ondaatje's 1992 Booker co winner…Sat Mar 15 1997 - 00:00
Moderato Cantabile, by Marguerite Duras (Calder, £5.99 in UK)How seriously are we supposed to take a book in which a nervy, complaining mother threatens her child "You've got to learn the…Sat Mar 15 1997 - 00:00
The taming of MaryONE of life's many levellers is the funny way in which the wild young rebels of yesterday tend to evolve into the middle aged…Thu Mar 13 1997 - 00:00
Troubles with Mom and DadTHE American realist Mona Simpson has set out to make the subject of dysfunctional family relationships her exclusive territory…Sat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
Loved Again, by Doris Lessing (Flamingo, £.99 in UK)Sarah is 65 and tormented by lustful desires directed at a vain, calculating young manSat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
Daydreamer with a deadlineLIKE a friendly magician busily at work, theatre-set designer Bob Crowley bends over the tiny model of his design for the forthcoming…Thu Mar 06 1997 - 00:00
Superb acting in a rare ChekhovDavid Hare's exuberant adaptation of Chekhov's rarely-performed Ivanov, currently running at London's Almeida Theatre, is fascinating…Wed Mar 05 1997 - 00:00
Superb acting in a rare ChekhovDavid Hare's exuberant adaptation of Chekhov's rarely-performed Ivanov, currently running at London's Almeida Theatre, is fascinating…Wed Mar 05 1997 - 00:00
Following Yeat's footstepsIT has taken 10 years for Prof Roy Foster to pursue William Butler Yeats through a complex early life and on arrival at 1914, …Mon Mar 03 1997 - 00:00
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin (Dover, £1.25 in UK)Italy has Leonardo da Vinci; America has Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), a genius who competes with Thomas Jefferson for the title…Sat Mar 01 1997 - 00:00
Walking in and out of time zonesRACISM, and the private tragedies of outsiders penalised for being different, are central to the fiction of the West Indian-born…Sat Mar 01 1997 - 00:00
Make-Believe Town, by David Mamet (Faber, £9.99 in UK)The Chicago playwright David Mamet has become famous through the often overwhelming verbal power of his dynamic, aggressive work…Sat Mar 01 1997 - 00:00
A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood (Minerva, £6.99 in UK)First published in 1964, this is the story of George, an English academic who lectures at a Californian universitySat Mar 01 1997 - 00:00
Nothing novel about the novelWHAT'S in a title? Often very little, sometimes quite a lotThu Feb 27 1997 - 00:00
Where sheep can't safely grazeMARTIN HAWKINS is a young man clearly burdened by a story to tell; and he does so with an abrupt, chillingly clinical candour…Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
Imaginings of Sand, by Andre Brink (Minerva, £6.99 in UK)Drawn by the imminent death of her adored grandmother, Kristien Muller returns to South Africa after an 11 year stay in London…Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
Ashes to Ashes, by Harold Pinter (Faber, £6.99 in UK)A couple sit in a gradually darkening room engaged in laconic, if tensely charged, conversationSat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
A RELUCTANT POLICEMANLOOKING back over a 40 year career in the RUC which included progressing from constable up to head of the force, the former chief…Thu Feb 20 1997 - 00:00
What Kate wrote: dissecting the bourgeois mindMANY Irish writers have been banned in Ireland and then later sufficiently rehabilitated to be reclaimed, even celebratedThu Feb 20 1997 - 00:00
Romance with silken threadsHAVING rejected his father's plans of a military career for him, Herve Joncour, a young Frenchman, chooses a more unusual life…Tue Feb 18 1997 - 00:00
Lament for the loss of innocencePERFECTION or perversion, or something of both? It is just over 40 years since Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was first published, …Sat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
HOORAY HENRYIF Classic FM presenter Henry Kelly were to catch a brown trout, it would certainly be at least 20 feet long and would probably…Thu Feb 13 1997 - 00:00
The Point, by Charles D'Ambrosio (Flamingo, £5.99 in UK)This is a very funny debut, despite the fact that its themes are death, despair, madness, loss and lonelinessSat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
Of airships and fallen angelsVARIATIONS of hell and damnation dominate Alan Wall's first novel, Bless the Thief (Seeker & Warburg, £12.99 in UK)Sat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
Watermark, by Joseph Brodsky (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Every winter for seventeen years, Russian poet and master essayist Joseph Brodsky visited Venice in order to pay homage to the…Sat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
Portrait of a naturalist in lifelong exileIT is difficult to write about individuals who in their own, books have drawn heavily on their lives, experiences and personal…Fri Feb 07 1997 - 00:00
THE RELUCTANT CIVIL SERVANTTHIS morning Dr Pat Donlon deservedly begins the rest of her life, having formally left the National Library yesterday alter …Thu Feb 06 1997 - 00:00
Gun running down a flight of paragraphsEVEN if Joan Didion's lumbering, pretentious thriller, The Last Thing He Wanted (Flamingo, £14Sat Feb 01 1997 - 00:00
Mother of Pearl, by Mary Morrissy (Vintage, £5.99 in UK)Even these days, when it seems no praise is too high for Irish writers, this novel is outstandingSat Feb 01 1997 - 00:00
The heart is a lonely hunterIN William Maxwell's outstanding short, complex novel So Long, See You Tomorrow (Harvill, £8Sat Jan 25 1997 - 00:00
Running Wild, by J.G. Ballard (Flamingo, £4.99 in UK)A psychiatrist is called in by the police to investigate a horrific massacre in which all the adult residents of an exclusive…Sat Jan 25 1997 - 00:00
Mummy's the worldEGYPTIAN archaeology is one of the most spectacular, and complex, in the world The Ancient Egypt exhibition running at the National…Sat Jan 25 1997 - 00:00
ACROSS THE BITTER SEAAT what point does an allegation based on powerfully convincing, non government funded scientific findings progress from interesting…Thu Jan 23 1997 - 00:00
New literary prize for HeaneyIRELAND's 1995 Nobel Literatare laureate, Seamus Heaney, has added yet another literary prize to his remarkable and ever expanding…Wed Jan 22 1997 - 00:00
The Sage of Concord and his circleTHE search for the Great American Novel is an amusing if aimless literary parlour gameSat Jan 18 1997 - 00:00
Death of a realistIT is ironic that at a time when it appears few Irish writers can do wrong, Paul Smith, one of the last of the banned generation…Sat Jan 18 1997 - 00:00
ACTOR IN EARNESTDESCRIBING herself as "the afterthought" in a family of four - "the next one up is nine years older than me, then the gap is …Thu Jan 16 1997 - 00:00
Slowness, by Milan Kundera (Faber, £5.99)In his first novel for five years - and his first written in French - the self-exiled Czech novelist confirms that he is more…Sat Jan 11 1997 - 00:00
Such a Long Journey, by Rohinton Mistry (Faber, £6.99 in UK)Shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, this assured, gentle first novel centres on the perplexed Gustad Nobel, an engagingly …Sat Jan 11 1997 - 00:00
