Books

Review: Allegro Pastel by Leif Randt

Tanja Arnheim and Jerome Aimler are Millennials in a long-distance relationship. Tanja is a Berlin-based novelist and Jerome a Frankfurt-based web designer. They text regularly and occasionally visit one...

Writers on Writing: Reflections on the 2025 Oxford Literary Festival

The Oxford Literary Festival is one of those events I hear about every year,...

Joanna Miller’s ‘The Eights’: Unapologetically, indulgently Oxford

Do not worry: despite the title, this is not a rowing novel. Instead, the...

A Trinity trail of Oxford’s best reads and retreats

Trinity Term has come upon us faster than the lovely magnolia has blossomed, which...

P.G. Wodehouse’s Ukridge at 100

It is unfortunate that P.G. Wodehouse's reputation in Oxford takes such a blow from his being a popular favourite among OUCA members. Still, he...

Top 10 Summer Reads

Summer, Edith Wharton, 1917 I’m going to start with an obvious pick: Summer by Edith Wharton. I read this for the first time recently, in...

Lost in translation?

As someone who is half Japanese, I’ve become accustomed to reading literature in different languages. Some books I’ve enjoyed so much that I’ve read...

The many voices of Franz Kafka: Reading The Metamorphosis

Spilling out of the gates of the Sheldonian Theatre and onto Broad Street, the lengthy queue for a public reading of Franz Kafka’s The...

Kafka: Making of an Icon at the Weston Library review: ‘Poignant and incredibly personal’

"Bodleian Libraries’ most recent exhibition at the Weston Library is an engaging dive into the life and legacy of the famous author."

RIP Dante, you would’ve loved fanfiction

When the trailer for an adaptation of Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel The Idea of You came out last month, it set the internet ablaze. Within a...

The Orwell Tour review: ‘A unique and first-rate travelogue’

Within the last year there have been countless new books on George Orwell, but Oliver Lewis’s The Orwell Tour, just released in paperback, is...

Christian Atheism by Slavoj Žižek review

‘And what did the twentieth century want with religion, already well worn and threadbare from its journey down the ages...What did we have to...

Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss review: Revenge of the lettuce

I have met Liz Truss only once. It was in Oxford Town Hall in November of last year and I had tried (without success)...

War, Peace and Writing

Throughout history, art has left an indelible cultural impact on humanity’s collective understanding of war. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ is perhaps the most famous manifestation of...

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States, and the Middle East 1979-2003 by Steve Coll review

Tyrants should only be brought down by their own people; they become martyrs when brought down by foreigners.

Bust?: Saving the Economy, Democracy and our Sanity by Robert Peston and Kishan Koria- Review

"So long as we have an economic system geared towards the accumulation of wealth rather than the acquisition of it, inequalities will continue to widen"

Book recommendations from the editors’ desk

"It’s rare that I find non-fiction to be such a page-turner, but Tara Westover’s autobiography was just that."

Greg Heffley: A Hero of Our Time

Few modern comic heroes align with our distinctive age – an age which Dickens’s famous opening, ‘It was the best of times, it was...

The man of the moment: Review of Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin

"Baldwin does his best to humanise Starmer and to deflate the view of him as “Mr Boring”."

Review: Chaucer Here and Now, Weston Library

"Mansplaining scribes, scandalised censors, and unfinished endings. Even from day one, there is no stable and single Chaucer."

Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe (Sathnam Sanghera, 2024): Review

Without confronting the wrongs of the past, the wrongs of the present will go on unabated.

The Autobiogra-phony

"A master of saying everything and nothing all at once! I sure would make a great celeb."

Wattpad: the new online course in creative writing?

The only issue that sites like Wattpad face is their association with ‘low value’ feminine writing and smut.

Literary Red Flags: Cause for Alarm?

"The internet loves to tell us what to do, especially when there's a healthy smattering of pseudo-psychology involved."