Monday, February 24, 2025

Books

The Secret History Characters as Oxford Tropes

Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is set in an exclusive college in Vermont but can be read as a satire of Oxford and its students. It invites us to question how little differentiates us from the elitist American universities.
Books Christina Scote -

Review: The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

There are some writers whose line of literary descent is so clear as to...
Books Hassan Akram -

BookTok: The Last Page of the Publishing Industry?

The #booktok stands that have become fixtures of bookshops across the country inspire intense...
Books Maya Heuer-Evans -

Defiance: Racial Injustice, Police Brutality, A Sister’s Fight for the Truth by Janet Alder

At Oxford’s Wesley Memorial Church, Janet Alder offered a harrowing and unflinching account of resilience in the face of systemic injustice.
Books Asma Issa -
Latest

Review: La Peste

‘Nous sommes en guerre’, Macron said in his address to the French nation on 16th March. At the time, my mother and I thought...

Friday Favourite: War and Peace

In this Coronavirus season, existing dystopian novels have suddenly become “prophetic”. The world may be grinding to a standstill, but Generation COVID can’t while...

Comfort Reading in the Time of Covid-19

David Nicholls  If rom-coms are the most comforting type of movie, then David Nicholls writes the most comforting type of novel. He is best known...

‘and all manner of things shall be well’

Jack Glynne-Jones explores how T.S. Eliot provides solace in periods of stress

Review: Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Kim Young-Ha

‘It’s been twenty-five years since I last murdered someone, or has it been twenty-six?’ A serial killer suffering from Alzheimer’s attempts to protect his daughter...

Review: Conversations with Friends

At one point in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, the protagonist, Frances, tells her best friend and former girlfriend, Bobbi: ‘If I could talk like you...

David Copperfield: strikingly modern?

We often speak of a ‘writer for our times’, the ‘voice of a generation’ – there is this need to define our age, to...

Review: That Reminds Me (2019)

Fragmentary, authentic and poetic – Derek Owusu’s latest publication, That Reminds Me, succeeds in its painfully honest exploration of a young Ghanaian boy’s journey into adulthood.  When...

Eco-Fiction

Last November, Waterstones named Greta Thunberg as their ‘author of the year’. Her collection of speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, certainly...

The Modern Memoir

“I can’t believe that we’re on the fifth instalment of my autobiography. As usual with me, the three years since my last book, You Only...

Literary Blackface

When the largest book retailer in the United States, Barnes & Noble, launched their so-called Diverse Editions initiative in honour of Black History Month,...

Review: Caging Skies and Jojo Rabbit

When depicting the world and ideology of Nazi-Germany, the theme of childhood or the child-like figure is quite a well-used one. Key examples include...

Queer Theory

As we go into LGBT+ History Month, many figures throughout history - modern or not - are looked upon and celebrated, and rightly so....

Queer Victoriana: Sex in the City

In 1881, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain was published privately in 250 copies. It purports to be the memoirs of Jack Saul, a...

Review: ‘American Dirt’

There was high expectation placed in American Dirt, what with Oprah Winfrey evangelising on Apple TV and a flood of celebrity endorsements on Twitter and...

Violent Music – Acaster’s ‘Perfect Sound Whatever’

Perfect Sound Whatever is comedian James Acaster’s part-memoir, part-encyclopaedic recount of the records that made 2016 the Greatest Year for Music of All Time,...

The Challenge of Maintaining a Legacy

January 2020 has brought with it the deaths of both Christopher Tolkien, son of J. R. R. Tolkien, and Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce. The...

The Enduring Legacy of Pippi Longstocking

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Pippi Longstocking’s arrival at Villa Villekulla. In her first appearance Astrid Lindgren’s eponymous heroine fascinates her neighbours,...

The Death of Jesus

The world of J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus novels – a trilogy which has accounted for most of the author’s output in the last decade – is not easy...

Review: ‘Howards End is on the Landing’

Oxford time does not have the rhythms of ordinary time. There are very few moments for extended, contemplative, peaceful reading, of the sort which...
1...91011...18Page 10 of 18

Follow us

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley