Book Reviews

Andrew Ross Sorkin's book blends cinematic storytelling with economic warning ahead of the 1929 crash’s 100th anniversary

Fascinating on family and drive, not so forthcoming about Ireland’s recent successes and failures

Releases include Night People: How to Be a DJ in ‘90s New York City; Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s and more

Allen’s flat prose serves as a mechanism to take us from one lengthy dialogue sequence to the next

Markovits crafted a softly radiant jewel with protagonist who is shrewd, funny, wounding and infuriating

Delaney explores how we thought, spoke and felt was radically transformed from the 1780s to 1916

Late Learner by Ciara Geraghty; The Living and the Dead, Tales of Loss and Rebirth from Irish Nature by Conor W O’Brien; Fieldnotes from Celtic Palestine by Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost

Bleak yet comforting book captures perfectly that damp, decaying feeling of Irish countryside winter

The in-depth story of London’s housing crisis is very relevant to Ireland

Donegal-born writer Liam Cagney finds meaning, exile and joy on Berlin’s dance floors

Low strips away the myth of marriage as a natural haven for ambitious women in this exhilarating read

New book gives surprising insights on the political battle between Haughey and FitzGerald

A new English edition of Shaw’s memoir reveals how she became a household name in Berlin with a children’s classic

Wang rejects western analysis that China’s authoritarian system will prevent it achieving tech supremacy

Behind the art-world lampooning lies a portrait of the creative mind

Is this a Banvillean supreme fiction as of old, or a luxury entertainment of the Benjamin Black school? Why not both?

Desai returns to the most radical ambition of novels: making the complexity of other lives shareable

The Irish Times columnist reflects on farming roots, newsroom dramas, and the cost of nostalgia

Brenda Fricker has written an unsentimental, brilliant and often shocking memoir

A book of two halves – and the part where he ceases to be Cat Stevens is the better one by far

Was Zappone more effective as an insider than as an activist? The answer is not always clear

Martina Evans on New Arcana; Chic to be Sad; Over Here; Afterparty

Tandoh is hysterically funny, demystifying what we find holy and deflating our culinary notions

Two young men try to negotiate their sexuality in a country hostile to any deviation from the norm

Leo Damrosch is less interested in decoding Stevenson’s oeuvre than in tracing his life

Stephen Walker’s book doesn’t attempt a deep psychological explanation, but offers a reminder of the scale of Trimble’s achievement

The BBC journalist warns of a dangerous policy spiral as nations reduce their reliance on international trade

In Farthest Seas; Blurred; Cécé; Diablo’s Boys; and Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide reviewed

Reviews of What We Left Unsaid and Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories

Former taoiseach provides gossip and entertaining titbits but displays detachment about matters of substance

Canadian author examines writing, memory and psychology in her new memoir

Part memoir and part historical novel, this is a rich account of lives lived inside the gates of history

Sharp-edged memoir offers a charged account of two women’s arduous stories of becoming

A fearless explorer arrives on Earth, postwar childhood tales and classics to bewitch a new generation

New novels by Mick Herron, Nicola Upson, Seishi Yokomizo, Janice Hallett and Rav Grewal-Kök

Reviews of Keegan: The Man Who Was King, Brick Dust and Even Still

There is no overall plot connecting the dozen or so temporally disparate narratives

Emotional and moral depth makes this so refreshing, like meeting the only adult in the room

Raymond Antrobus dismantles myths and reclaims deafness as a cultural, linguistic and poetic space

Many of Tynan’s stories eschew a traditional narrative arc, suggesting that for this generation, there is no happy ending