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Alexander Howard

Alexander Howard

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What if a sitting president became dangerously unstable? The 1965 novel Night of Camp David makes for uncanny reading today

What if a sitting president became dangerously unstable? The 1965 novel Night of Camp David makes for uncanny reading today

Fletcher Knebel’s novel has much to say about the fragility of our democratic institutions and the dangers of unchecked authority.

20.02.2025 30

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

‘The complicated zone where the beautiful and the damned collide’: remembering David Lynch

The acclaimed American filmmaker David Lynch has died at the age of 78.

17.01.2025 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Ecology of Fear: Mike Davis’ history of LA and natural disaster is re-read whenever fire rages in California

Mike Davis traces natural disaster and climate change in Los Angeles over centuries, painting a vivid picture of a city on the perpetual brink of...

14.01.2025 30

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Genius, madman or both? Japanese literary icon Yukio Mishima died leading a coup. He would have been 100 today

The life and death of acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima is a cautionary reminder of the complex, sometimes dangerous relationship between creativity and...

13.01.2025 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Magic Mountain is a sweeping critique of totalitarian Europe. 100 years later, its warnings feel urgent

This month, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain turns 100. One of the 20th century’s towering literary achievements, it is a...

26.11.2024 5

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Magic Mountain is a sweeping critique of totalitarian Europe. 100 years later, its warnings about extremism feel urgent

This month, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain turns 100. One of the 20th century’s towering literary achievements, it is a...

25.11.2024 2

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Proud Boys founder counselled Kanye West about Hitler. John Safran has the lowdown

Gavin McInnes, founder of far-right “Western chauvinist” group the Proud Boys, told a BBC documentary that “the corrupt leftwing media” was...

01.11.2024 20

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

100 years of surrealism: how a French writer inspired by the avant-garde changed the world forever

A century ago, French writer André Breton published a manifesto that would go on to become one of the most influential artistic texts of the 20th...

14.10.2024 3

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Free speech ‘prophet’ Michel Houellebecq is a fan of Trump and Brexit. His satirical final novel predicts political chaos

A few months ago, the president of prestigious French publishing house Gallimard reported that Meta’s generative AI tool had refused requests to...

14.10.2024 2

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Friday essay: We all live in the world of Ayn Rand, egomaniac godmother of libertarianism. Can fiction help us navigate it?

Love her or loathe her, Ayn Rand is an undeniably influential figure. Her contemporary admirers range from celebrities – Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie,...

19.09.2024 1

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

‘An ideas novel that’s not boring’: Rachel Kushner’s revolutionary spy novel reflects on our hurtle towards extinction

Rachel Kushner ranks among the finest novelists working today. The recipient of several major literary awards and a former Guggenheim Fellow,...

16.09.2024 3

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2024: André Dao breaks rules and witnesses uncomfortable truths

André Dao’s debut novel Anam (Penguin Random House) has just won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, worth A$80,000. This follows...

12.09.2024 3

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Queen’s Nanny: an entertaining, timely and informative play about Elizabeth II’s governess

Born in East Ayrshire in 1909, the Scottish educator and governess Marion Crawford, who trained as a child psychologist, is best remembered – if...

11.09.2024 4

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

‘Fake news of the highest order’: Donald Trump team refutes racism revelations in new family memoir

“Donald was pissed. Boy, was he pissed.” This is how Fred C. Trump III describes the moment, sometime in the early 1970s, when his uncle, Donald J....

09.08.2024 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Joanna Murray-Smith ’s new adaptation of Uncle Vanya reminds us Chekhov’s play is both timeless and timely

Virginia Woolf always maintained that, of all of the great writers, the British novelist Jane Austen “is the most difficult to catch in the act of...

02.08.2024 2

The Conversation

Alexander Howard