Norwegian crime and thriller writer Jo Nesbo (http://jonesbo.com/) will need no introduction to his legions of devoted readers. In this latest thriller, Blood on Snow, we read the tender story of Olav. He is known as an extremely talented “fixer” to a handful of Oslo’s most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has […]
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) fell like a nuclear weapon into Victorian consciousness. The implication for many thinking people was that the whole of the living world is engaged in a brutal, pitiless competition for survival. Worse than this realisation is that if Man is co-terminus with the natural world, then we
Does Altruism Exist by David Sloan Wilson Read More »
In comparative mythology, the related motifs of a dying god and of a dying-and-rising god (also known as a death-rebirth-deity) have appeared in diverse cultures. In the more commonly accepted motif of a dying god, the deity goes away and does not return. The motif of a dying-and-rising god refers to a deity which returns, is resurrected
The Myth of the Resurrection by Joseph McCabe Read More »
It’s only in very recent times that people have found it uncomfortable to believe in the reality of The Devil. This is in line with the liberal squeamishness about believing in the reality of Hell. Millions across the globe, though, who do not live near University precincts or live in Georgian town houses, still believe
The Devil: A Biography by Peter Stanford Read More »
Educated at Edinburgh and Oxford, Kate Clanchy (http://literature.britishcouncil.org/kate-clanchy) lived in London’s East End for several years, before moving to Oxfordshire where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her 2013 novel has a summary as follows. It’s in response to an advertisement that Struan Robertson, a bright orphan, and just seventeen, leaves his dour native
Meeting the English Read More »
Patrick Gale (http://galewarning.org/about-patrick/) based himself in London after graduating from Oxford in 1983, starting out in a bedsit in Notting Hill. Though his website proudly reports that he “has never had a grown-up job”, Gale supported himself while writing his first novels – The Aerodynamics of Pork (1985), Ease (1985) and Kansas in August (1987) –
A Place Called Winter Read More »
John Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)) has been entertaining us now for years with his trenchant attacks on humanism, global capitalism, campaigning atheism, progress (historical and ethical), The Enlightenment, and any other (as he sees it) variety of flaccid optimism. He has presented these in False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans
The Soul of the Marionette by John Gray Read More »
“You don’t see the connections in your life until it’s too late to disentangle them,” says Alice, a character in Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel. This thought-provoking book is about patterns which are repeated through generations of families and nations. It traces the confluences of the personal and historical, of art and life. We meet Anne Quirk whose life
The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan Read More »
One thought troubles me greatly. It is entirely possible to be deluded and live your whole life through happily. A clear example is that hundreds of millions of humans believed that the Sun was moving round the Earth daily. They organised their agriculture, society, calendar and religion around this idea. For them it seems to
The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer Read More »
