Culture Wars reviews contemporary fiction along with regular feature coverage of fiction festivals such as Jewish Book Week and prizes like the Orange Prize and Man Booker.

Browse books by title with CW new books archive feature.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

Susanna Clarke

Fantasy novels seem to be filled with the battle between cultured, sensible enlightenment and the wild, natural, instinctual senses. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell these two opposites represent the two sides that make up the nature of all things English.

Havoc In Its Third Year - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

Natasha Hulugalle

‘Like the best historical novels, it vividly captures the period yet resonates with the present’, enthuses the hype for Havoc, in its Third Year. It may be a whimsical suggestion, but what exactly is wrong with an old-fashioned swashbuckler that doesn’t resonate with the present?

The Island Walkers - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

John Bemrose

I generally hate novels about the working class: the writers either have a very low opinion of our intelligence, or they worship us as improbable saints.

Clear: A Transparent Novel - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

Nicola Barker

On the surface, Clear is about Blaine and his box. The Above the Below circus at London’s Tower Bridge is backdrop; common curiosity drawing the characters into their strangely fractured discourses in its shadow; and a shared lexicon through which they interrogate each other.

Maps for Lost Lovers - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

Nadeem Aslam

Aslam’s vision is not a happy one, and his painting of it takes much getting used to. The influence of Rushdie, instructive metaphors threatening at times to drown the sense, is almost overpowering, but both reader and author can settle down together after a couple of chapters.

Purple Hibiscus - (Man Booker Prize 2004, Longlist)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Kambili must navigate her way through a complex of confusing and contradictory symbols just as Nigeria itself searches for unity amidst external imposition and internal unrest.

Weary Gargoyles

The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood and Contemporary British and Irish Fiction: an Introduction Through Interviews by Sharon Monteith, Jenny Newman and Pat Wheeler

The hysterical realists may be gifted writers, but they are not able to translate their understanding of the world in a truly literary way, without debasing the form in the name of, for example, macro-microeconomics.

A Distant Shore - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Caryl Phillips

Thirty years ago Pink Floyd sang ’...hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way’. There is a literary genre that focuses on sadness, disappointment and unfulfilled lives, which is particularly English: I’m thinking of Anita Brookner, Philip Larkin, Morrissey and others. The French have a way of making social isolation sexy, but both approaches have their merits.

Notes On A Scandal - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Zoe Heller

Put the words ‘sex’ and ‘child’ in the same sentence, and you are likely to have even the most bleeding-hearted of liberals baying for blood. So when schoolteacher Sheba Hart embarks on an illicit affair with fifteen-year-old student Steven Connolly, it is only a matter of time before she is hauled before a frenzied media with an insatiable desire to be shocked.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon, an established children’s author, has written a highly polished and engaging first novel for adults. The story is narrated by a fifteen year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome (similar to autism), who lives with his father in Swindon.

The Taxi Driver’s Daughter - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Julia Darling

Caris ‘had never really thought about what she didn’t have, about the world outside her street and school’ until her mother was arrested.

Oryx and Crake - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Margaret Atwood

Reading Margaret Atwood as an adult is like reading CS Lewis as a child. For me, there is something addictive in their style of writing, their command of narrative, and in the detail of the worlds they bring to life.

Something Might Happen - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Julie Myerson

Thoughts, like a loud noise that interrupts a silence, can be disturbing. They can shock in their reality and their honesty - and honesty is something we are very scared of. Perhaps this is why Julie Myerson’s book is so difficult to read; not because of the deliberate lack of ‘action’, but because of its sometimes uneasy frankness.

The Good Doctor - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Damon Galgut

Any writer hoping to communicate a bleak or sour understanding of post-apartheid South Africa should accept the likelihood of their work being compared to JM Coetzee. It has therefore become an unwritten rule that any review of The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut must contain such a reference. As a comparison it’s hackneyed, but understandable.

The Romantic - (Man Booker Prize 2003)

Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy has written a fairly straightforward love story. The Romantic - shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize - has Louise Kirk tell the story of her love for and betrayal by both an alcoholic lover and a runaway mother.