Portside

This is the final volume of the award-winning portrait of the earliest days of the English Reformation and the birth of capitalism, as those events played out in the life of Thomas Cromwell, courtier to king Henry VIII of England.

This first novel by famed essayist Coates explores the world of slavery and abolition. The author "re-creates the world of the pre-Civil War South," says reviewer Fear, "with a journalist’s eye and ear for detail."

Novelist and writer Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Here is the speech she gave on that occasion.

This new novel by Vietnamese-American poet and writer Ocean Vuong, is an immigrant's story that, writes reviewer McAlpin, is also about "beauty, survival, and freedom, which sometimes isn't freedom at all."

Jenny Farrell discusses one of the great working class novels in English literature, a literary exposure of the 'Great Money Trick' - the exploitation inherent in capitalism.

Jack London, who died 100 years ago last November, was one of the most prominent socialist writers of the early 20th century. Here is a look at some of his political writings.

Claude McKay (1889-1948) was a Jamaican-born poet and novelist who became one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s upsurge of black culture that was a central feature of the jazz age. He was also a leading left wing intellectual of the era. This newly discovered novel is a literary and cultural milestone.

The Man Booker prize, given annually for best English language novel published in the United Kingdom, was awarded this week to Marlon James, for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. He is the first writer from Jamaica to win the prize. The novel is a tale of 1970s-1980s Jamaica, CIA plots, and violence. It is "a story about Jamaica that doesn’t only take place in Jamaica," says Kei Miller, who reviewed the novel late last year.

One of the biggest literary stories of the summer has been the controversy over To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee's new novel, Go Set a Watchman. It turns out To Kill a Mockingbird hero Atticus Finch, as portrayed in this new book, was far more racist than fans of Lee's earlier novel remember. Should they have been surprised? Laura Marsh talks to several scholars who say Finch's racism was here all along, if readers had only taken the care to look.