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Ever Since We Small by Celeste Mohammed review – a big-hearted Caribbean tale

This Trinidadian family saga blurs the line between real and imagined to create a multilayered history of an island and its people

Ever Since We Small opens in Bihar, India in 1899. Jayanti dreams of a woman offering her bracelets. Within days, her husband becomes sick and dies. Widowhood is not an option and Jayanti prepares for her own sati. Determined to apply the “godly might of English justice” and uphold a law banning the practice, an English doctor and magistrate muscle in to stop her. In an 11th-hour volte face, Jayanti, desiring life over the afterlife, allows herself to be saved. Triumphant, the magistrate suggests she become his mistress, but instead she opts to be shipped off to Trinidad. The island, she’s told, is a place where the shame of her choice will be forgotten.

Ever Since We Small, Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, is a more cohesive work than Pleasantview, which won the Bocas prize for Caribbean literature in 2022. The opening chapter follows on from an academic introduction and Mohammed’s style is more reverent, less ballsy and humorous, than the warts-and-all portraits drawn in Pleasantview; but casting characters from the distant past often has that effect on novelists. The tone is appropriate, however; Mohammed here is the sober observer taking in the fate of women like Jayanti, who if they have choices at all, they are between bad and worse.

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© Photograph: by Marc Guitard/Getty Images

© Photograph: by Marc Guitard/Getty Images

© Photograph: by Marc Guitard/Getty Images

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Quels sont les meilleurs jeux sur PS5 ? Notre top des classiques

La PS5 a cinq ans. Au fil des années, la console a su accumuler ses propres classiques dans un océan de sorties partagé entre survival horror, FPS nerveux, RPG, MMO… Si l'on devait ne retenir que 20 jeux , voici les titres que l'on considère comme les meilleurs jeux sortis sur la PS5.

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Confessions of a Shopaholic novelist Sophie Kinsella dies aged 55

The ‘queen of romantic comedy’ has died 18 months after announcing her brain cancer diagnosis

Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55.

Wickham, dubbed “the queen of romantic comedy” by novelist Jojo Moyes, wrote more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which have sold more than 45m copies.

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© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

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Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy review – fear and loathing in New York

This sharp, bleak debut satirises the current cultural moment through the life and loves of a cynical young writer

There is a long tradition of stories about artists that are also about the question of how to represent life in art; novels about artists with toxic female friendships are more unusual.

Enter Anika Jade Levy’s slim and sharp debut Flat Earth, which shares its title with a film made by a woman whom Avery, the narrator, identifies as her best friend. Frances is a rich and beautiful twentysomething who becomes a “reluctant celebrity in certain circles” after her film, “an experimental documentary about rural isolation and rightwing conspiracy theories” in the modern-day United States, premieres to critical acclaim at a gallery in New York. Avery, meanwhile, is struggling to write what she describes as “a book of cultural reports”.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

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On the Calculation of Volume III by Solvej Balle review – how to make a timeloop endlessly interesting

The hypnotic third novel in the hit Danish series grapples with the philosophical realities of being stuck on repeat in 18 November

The time loop story, in which characters repeatedly relive the same span of time, has become synonymous with the 1993 film Groundhog Day, but the idea has much older roots. In PD Ouspensky’s 1915 novel Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, the feckless Osokin is given the chance to live his life over again, only to find himself making all the same mistakes. Like Groundhog Day’s insufferable Phil Connors, Osokin can change nothing without changing himself.

Solvej Balle’s much-lauded series On the Calculation of Volume takes a very different approach. She first began working on the idea decades ago, several years before Groundhog Day was released. The film, she says, “helped me with research by trying out some of the roads I did not want to take”. The books, five so far with two more planned, have proved a literary sensation in her native Denmark, with the first three volumes together scooping the 2022 Nordic Council Literature prize, the highest literary honour in Scandinavia. This is the third to be published in English this year; the first was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker prize.

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© Photograph: Bernhard Lang/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bernhard Lang/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bernhard Lang/Getty Images

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The Effingers by Gabriele Tergit review – a vivid portrait of Berlin before the Nazis

Written in 1951 and now translated into English for the first time, this family saga by the acclaimed German author recaptures a golden age for Jewish life

In 1948, the German Jewish author Gabriele Tergit travelled to Berlin. There, in ruins, was the city in which she was born and grew up, reported on, then chronicled in fiction. Tergit had been one of the shining lights of interwar Berlin’s flourishing journalistic scene; she had also married into one of the city’s most prominent Jewish families. In 1931 her debut novel announced her as a literary phenomenon.

Then the Nazis came to power. Tergit was on an enemies list. She fled, first to Czechoslovakia, then to Palestine, and finally to London, where she lived from 1938 until her death in 1982. Never again did she call Berlin home. When she visited after the war, she found no real place in the conservative postwar German literary world – and no real audience for The Effingers, her newly completed magnum opus. A version was printed in 1951, but to little acclaim; only recently has a critical rediscovery in Germany established Tergit as one of the country’s major authors. Now, thanks to an excellent translation by Sophie Duvernoy, The Effingers is appearing in English.

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© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy

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Paramount abandonne son projet science-fiction sur Area 51 signé Colin Trevorrow

La fusion entre Skydance et Paramount, officialisée plus tôt dans l’année, marque un tournant significatif pour l’un des studios historiques d’Hollywood. Avec l’arrivée d’une nouvelle direction aux commandes, une révision complète du catalogue de projets en développement s’imposait naturellement. Josh Greenstein et Dana Goldberg, fraîchement nommés co-présidents de Paramount Pictures, ont entrepris un examen méticuleux ... Lire plus

L'article Paramount abandonne son projet science-fiction sur Area 51 signé Colin Trevorrow est apparu en premier sur Fredzone.
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Five of the best science fiction books of 2025

An eco-masterpiece, icy intrigue, cyberpunkish cyborgs, memory-eating aliens and super-fast travel sends the world spinning out of control

Circular Motion
Alex Foster (Grove)
Alex Foster’s novel treats climate catastrophe through high-concept satire. A new technology of super-fast pods revolutionises travel: launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, they fly west and land again in minutes, regardless of distance. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, our globe starts to spin faster. Days contract, first by seconds, then minutes, and eventually hours. It’s a gonzo conceit, and Foster spells out the consequences, his richly rendered characters caught up in their own lives as the world spirals out of control. As days become six hours long, circadian rhythms go out of the window and oceans start to bulge at the equator. The increasing whirligig of the many strands of storytelling converge on their inevitable conclusion, with Foster’s sparky writing, clever plotting and biting wit spinning an excellent tale.

When There Are Wolves Again
EJ Swift (Arcadia)
There are few more pressing issues with which fiction can engage than the climate crisis, and SF, with its capacity to extrapolate into possible futures and dramatise the realities, is particularly well placed to do so. Swift’s superb novel is an eco-masterpiece. Its near-future narrative of collapse and recovery takes us from the rewilding of Chornobyl and the return of wolves to Europe, through setback and challenge, to 2070, a story by turns tragic, alarming, uplifting, poetic and ultimately hopeful. Swift’s accomplished prose and vivid characterisation connect large questions of the planet’s destiny with human intimacy and experience, and she avoids either a too-easy doomsterism or a facile techno-optimism. We can bring the world back from the brink, but it will require honesty, commitment, hard work and a proper sense of stewardship.

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© Illustration: Debora Szpilman

© Illustration: Debora Szpilman

© Illustration: Debora Szpilman

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