(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
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The Guardian: Guardian review

Saturday 8 January 2011

Features & reviews p2

John Gray on humanity's quest for immortality

How do we deal with a purposeless universe and the finality of death? From Victorian séances to the embalming of Lenin's corpse to schemes for uploading our minds into cyberspace, there have have been numerous attempts to deny man's mortality. Why can't we accept the limits of science, asks John Gray

Features & reviews p5

My hero: Irom Chanu Sharmila

My hero: Costa First Novel Award-winner Kishwar Desai on the Indian political activist Irom Chanu Sharmila

Features & reviews p6

The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed – review

Richard Williams hails the man who devoted his life to recording the songs and soundscapes of America and beyond
Small Island by Andrea Levy

Week one: the back story

Features & reviews p7

The Life and Works of Alfred Bestall by Caroline G Bott - review

Kathryn Hughes is delighted by a biography of the man who drew Rupert Bear
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders - review

A study of the roots of our fascination with violent crime fascinates Andrew Motion
Proust's Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini - review

Bitten by the collecting bug? Nothing mad about that, says Rick Gekoski

Features & reviews p8

Books to look out for in the next six months

From 'oikophilia' to Snowball Earth, by way of poetry and a kaleidoscope of fiction

Features & reviews p10

Jane Gardam

'I think I would have died if my first book hadn't been published. I was desperate to get started – I was possessed'

Features & reviews p11

Ten of the best: explosions

John Mullan on 10 of the best explosions in literature

Features & reviews p12

Pulse by Julian Barnes - review

Rachel Cusk praises the compassion and truth of Julian Barnes's painstaking short stories
Ours Are the Streets by Sunjeev Sahota - review

Robin Yassin-Kassab finds much to admire in a debut novel of identity and radicalisation
Science fiction round-up - reviews

Science fiction: Eric Brown's choice

Features & reviews p13

After Claude by Iris Owens – review

by Alfred Hickling
How to Live by Sarah Bakewell – review

Nicholas Lezard finds a life of Montaigne calming
Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon

by Keith Brooke
You by John Haynes – review

by Ben Wilkinson
Aristocracy by William Doyle – review

by PD Smith
Phantom Noise by Brian Turner – review

by Ben Wilkinson

Features & reviews p14

Fay Godwin at the National Media Museum

Throughout her long career, Fay Godwin – with her portraits of authors, bleak landscapes and scenes of urban dereliction – was the most poetic of photographers, writes Margaret Drabble

Features & reviews p15

Sandy Denny: no fear of time

Confident and self-reliant, Sandy Denny was a leading light of the 1960s folk revival. A new collection of recordings shows that she was also a great lyrical poet, argues Rob Young

Features & reviews p16

Rereading: Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin

Rereading: Written in two months in 1946, Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada's account of a working-class couple's resistance to the Nazi regime, poses profound moral questions. Helen Dunmore on a miraculous novel
The Saturday poem: Longitude

By Jackie Kay

Features & reviews p17

The war against cliché has failed

Language can't remain in aspic, but cliché has defeated Martin Amis. Are there any linguistic developments we should be celebrating?

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