Reviewed in the LRB - Vol. 43 No. 14

From the publisher:
A Times, Spectator, TLS and BBC Music Magazine Book of the Year…

From the publisher:
A richly detailed graveyard history of the Florentine poet whose dead body shaped Italy from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the Risorgimento, World War I, and Mussolini's fascist dictatorship.Dante, whose Divine Comedy gave the…

From the publisher:
A 400-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice.In medieval and early modern Europe, the practice of alchemy promised extraordinary physical transformations. Who would not be…

From the publisher:
Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes?…

From the publisher:
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING* 'A critical piece of history and a devastating expose' Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for…

From the publisher:
The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, a poet who, as T. S. Eliot put it, 'divides the world with Shakespeare, there being no third'. His, like ours, was a world of moral uncertainty and political…

From the publisher:
On 2 April 1792, John Kimber, captain of the Bristol slave ship Recovery, was denounced in the House of Commons by William Wilberforce for flogging a fifteen-year-old African girl to death. The story, caricatured in a contemporary Isaac…

From the publisher:
*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2020**A New Statesman Book of the Year*'A mesmerising, mysterious book . . . Haunting. Worrying. Beautiful' Russell T. Davis'Brilliantly unsettling' Olivia Laing'A magificent book' Neil Gaiman'An…

From the publisher:
Throughout his career, M. John Harrison's writing has defied categorisation, building worlds both unreal and all-too real, overlapping and interlocking with each other. His stories are replete with fissures and portals into parallel…

From the publisher:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZEA wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity, authenticity and the self in the age of the internet‘I loved it’ Zadie Smith‘Brilliant, very funny’…

From the publisher:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2022SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG FICTION AWARD 2021'Diamond-sharp, timely and urgent' Observer, Best Debuts of 2021'Subtle, elegant, scorching'…

From the publisher:
In Of Woman Born, originally published in 1976, influential poet and feminist Adrienne Rich examines the patriarchic systems and political institutions that define motherhood. Exploring her own experience-as a woman, a poet, a feminist and…