Britain's best loved literary magazine, now in its 30th year
Reviews of new books in history, politics, travel, biography and fiction
Contributors who are irreverent, accomplished and amusing

"In Literary Review you find something that has almost vanished from the book pages: its contributors are actually interested in Literature."
Martin Amis

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Washington Post

The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2011

Britain's Most Dreaded Literary Prize:
THE WINNER AND MORE...
A look at this year's bad sex highlights (and lowlights). Read more.

Selected highlights from the December 2011 / January 2012 bumper double issue:

Eric Ormsby on the magic of Arabian Nights
STORIES TOLD IN BED
On certain restless nights, despite the plush furnishings of his royal bed or the soothing melodies of his musicians or even the exquisite attentions of one or more of his 300 concubines, the mighty caliph Harun al-Rashid, fifth in the Abbasid line, could not find sleep. Accompanied by his favourite eunuch, Masrur, who also served as his headsman, he prowled the palace gardens or roamed in disguise through the souks of Baghdad; sometimes he summoned learned scholars for a chat - normally an infallible remedy for insomnia. If these expedients failed, he had his eunuch fetch Ali ibn Mansur, a wit from Damascus, to while away the long hours of the night with his fabulous tales. In the end, only stories could lull the caliph to sleep. Read more.

Eric Kaufmann examines Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature
PEACE IN OUR TIME
'A lynching took place recently outside an ironmonger's shop in Nairobi ... It was close to one of the city's fancier shopping centres, early in the morning, with commuters streaming down the road on foot. A man had his mobile phone stolen but managed to lay a hand on the thief just long enough for the crowd to close in. His two accomplices waded in to rescue their man but the mob engulfed them. Stones rained down. Boulders crushed their heads and chests. Then the crowd moved on, became commuters once more, and the police removed three bodies.' Read more.

Miranda Seymour on the starstruck Stefan Zweig
NO DON JUAN
Among the treasures in the British Library, one of the most unexpected is a collection of autographed manuscript scores that includes Mozart's thematic catalogue of his own works. Donated in 1986, these formed part of the incredible hoard accumulated by Stefan Zweig throughout his life. Read more.

Frank Dikötter on Christianity's survival in China
THE TENACITY OF HOPE
Above the main entrance of Westminster Abbey, carved in French Richemont limestone, ten life-size sculptures of twentieth-century martyrs peer into the distance. Martin Luther King is shown with outstretched arms in a welcoming and protective gesture, an infant huddled at his feet; but how many visitors would recognise Wang Zhiming, a Protestant minister executed in 1973 during the Cultural Revolution? Read more.

O A Westad on Roosevelt's Lost Alliances
COLD HANDS, WARM HEART
What role does emotion play in modern diplomacy? Would the US reaction to 9/11 have been different if George W Bush had not needed to act as a Texas cowboy in order to hide his privileged East Coast upbringing? Read more.

Joan Smith hails a history of dieting
MORE OF JESUS, LESS OF ME
A book about dieting is almost bound by law to have a picture of a woman on the cover. But Louise Foxcroft's entertaining and occasionally stomach-churning history of the subject is a revelation about the weight problems of men. Read more.

Adrian Tinniswood on the passions of Queen Anne
VILE BODIES
Poor old Queen Anne. Fat, lame, with an obstetric history that would break the hardest of hearts: seventeen pregnancies in seventeen years, sixteen of them resulting in miscarriages, still births or infant deaths. Read more.

NEW FICTION

Jonathan Beckman appraises Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding
ROUGH DIAMOND
The Art of Fielding, a hefty book about the fortunes of a college baseball team, has arrived to trumpets and cymbals, as much because of the colossal advance paid for it - Keith Gessen, a friend of the author, has written an e-book just about the novel's auction - as because of the exhortations of Jonathan Franzen in its favour. Read more.

Anthony Cummins on Roberto Bolaño
WAR GAMES
The latest title to appear in English from the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño presents itself as the diary of a young German tourist on the Costa Brava one summer in the 1980s. Udo Berger has taken a holiday against his better judgement: it's not his day job at an electricity company that bothers him, but his reputation as a champion war gamer. To the dismay of his girlfriend, Ingeborg, who would rather lie on the beach and hit the clubs, Udo has brought along his ever-present boards and counters, not to mention a stack of reading for an article he plans to write on strategy in advance of an imminent conference in Paris - all of which means he must maintain contact with Conrad, his mentor back home in Stuttgart. Read more.

Online exclusive - Tales from City Hall:

Mira Bar-Hillel on Boris & Ken
CLOWN TO THE LEFT, JOKER TO THE RIGHT
During the Tory Party Conference in October Boris Johnson encountered his unauthorised biographer, Sonia Purnell. 'I spotted Boris at around midnight,' says Purnell, who used to work with him in the Daily Telegraph office in Brussels. Read more.