Back to Journalism
- It’s more terrible not to remember, review of The Unwomanly Face of War and Boys in Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich, Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2017
- Me, Graham Greene and the voice that won’t go away, review of The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer, Independent, 19 May 2012
- Joseph Roth: a life in letters, Sunday Telegraph, 5 February 2012
- In search of Europe, Prospect, November 2011
- From one uncertainty to another, Times Literary Supplement, 3 June 2011
- In dreams, review of Circus Bulgaria by Deyan Enev translated by Kapka Kassabova, Times Literary Supplement, 24 December 2010
- From Delft to Java, review of The Tea Lords by Hella S Haasse translated by Ina Rilke, Guardian, 4 December 2010
- I run, you run…, profile of Usain Bolt, Stiletto (Paris), November 2010
- Magic in the mirror, review of The Accident by Ismail Kadare translated by John Hodgson, Independent, 3 September 2010
- Imperfect spies, review of Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré, Prospect, September 2010
- The master of small things, a profile of David Mitchell and review of his 5th novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Prospect, May 2010
- Pole positions, review of Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk, Times Literary Supplement, 2 April 2010
- Illuminating the human heart, review of The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, Prospect, January 2010
- Almost a British Balzac, review of A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks, Prospect, September 2009
- Mysteries afloat, review of The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers, Times Literary Supplement, 21 August 2009
- Damned by his brain, review of The Sixth Man: the Extraordinary Life of Paddy Costello by James McNeish, Times Literary Supplement, 24 July 2009
- In possession of all the facts, review of A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book, Prospect, May 2009
- Europe-bound, review of Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Guardian, 4 April 2009
- Tales of a magic mountain, review of Sacred Sierra by Jason Webster, Independent, 27 March 2009
- Avoid the beer in Bratislava, review of The Wooden Village and The End of Freddy, parts 2 & 3 of the Rivers of Babylon trilogy) by Peter Pist’anek, Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2009
- Wisdom is a butterfly on a train in Azerbaijan, a review of Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Independent, 12 September 2008
- An aesthetic of fatality, on the fiction of Alexandros Papadiamandis, Times Literary Supplement, 25 July 2008
- “Book of a lifetime” – The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov, Independent, 20 June 2008
- Appuyons sur le frein (“Step on the brake”), an essay on how French will survive as a literary language, appears in L’Atelier du Roman no.53, summer 2008
- The man who runs the heating steals the show, review of Peter Pist’anek’s Rivers of Babylon, Independent, 25 January 2008
- Dangerous ideals, review of Andrew O’Hagan’s novel Be Near Me, Prospect, October 2006
- An essay on Rabelais’s opposition to the Church, The first offender, appeared in the PEN / Penguin anthology Free Expression Is No Offence, December 2005
- A rational Quixote, an essay on Cervantes’ legacy to the Enlightenment, Prospect, May 2005
- The return of story, an essay on the revival of storytelling, Prospect, December 2004
- Graham Greene, a revisionist essay, Prospect, September 2004
- Europe’s lost stories, a polemic about Europe’s literary decline and Britain’s neglect, Prospect, July 2004 (also in Thinking Allowed, The Best of Prospect 1995-2005, Atlantic Books)
- Modernism’s suicide, review of Jonathan Coe’s biography of B S Johnson, Prospect, June 2004
- Continental shelf, an essay on the fiction of the new European Union, Guardian, May 2004
- A literature of accession, short essay on Hungarian fiction, Prospect, May 2004
- The novelist’s neurosis, review of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Prospect, April 2004
- The old English agony, review of John Fowles’ Journals, Prospect, November 2003
- An introduction to Norman Lewis’s last book The Tomb in Seville (Jonathan Cape) appeared in November 2003
- Keeping fiction in the past, another view of the work of Pat Barker, Prospect, August 2003
- Notes towards a supreme fiction, short essay on the legacy of Cyril Connolly, New Statesman, December 2002
- In the knight’s footsteps, a seven-part essay on the art of the European novel, Guardian, July-August 2002
Part 1: In the knight’s footsteps
Part 2: Rebels against reality
Part 3: Waves of modernity
Part 4: Ghosts of memory
Part 5: Pushkin’s children
Part 6: Words for weapons
Part 7: The burden of history
- Nous sommes fragiles (“We are fragile”), an essay about 9/11 and the stories of Alexandros Papadiamantis, L’Atelier du Roman no.30, summer 2002
- Ce qui nous reste de la sagesse (“What’s left of our wisdom”), an essay about the Journal of A O Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud, L’Atelier du Roman no.28, winter 2001
- Quelques mots sur l’ennui: le roman et la mondialisation (“A few words about boredom, the novel and globalisation”), L’Atelier du Roman no.26, summer 2001
- Melodies of melancholy, short essay on Joseph Roth, New Statesman, February 2001
- An American sublime, a short essay on F Scott Fitzgerald, New Statesman, 28 August 2000
- Jamais connecté, ou La consicence d’Italo Svevo (“Never Connect, or The conscience of Italo Svevo”), L’Atelier du Roman no.21, spring 2000
- A thick fog covers the Plain of Blackbirds, review of Three Elegies for Kosovo by Ismail Kadare, London Review of Books, 13 May 1999
- Diary about Nabokov’s inspiration for Lolita in the work of Valery Larbaud, London Review of Books, July 1997
- Leader of the awkward squad, an essay on Kierkegaard’s literary enterprise, Guardian, February 1994
- A plague on both your houses, an essay on Russian writing post-perestroika, Guardian, March 1993
