Robin Robertson's Reading List

"“Got no feelings, in any way whatsoever, for that evil bitch.” An obvious choice, but this novel is still—after nearly a century—powerful, innovative and exhilarating. There is more going on in one sentence in Ulysses than there is in most contemporary novels."

"An extraordinary first-hand account, in poetry and prose, of the author’s time as a private in the Battle of the Somme. Jones is the great lost Modernist, and was as important an artist as he was a writer."

"It’s the harrowing story of the dissolution and demise of an English consul, Geoffrey Firmin, in a small Mexican town on the Day of the Dead. An incredibly moving cautionary tale."

"War Music by Christopher Logue comprises versions of Homer’s Iliad, 1981. It’s a modern, cinematic re-rendering of the Greek epic which manages to re-cast Homer’s battles for twentieth-century readers, suggesting (as Jones does) that all wars are the same wars."

"This is my favourite of all his books, and the one that sees his poetry loosening, and tightening, into work of international stature. Written at a fresh distance from his home in the North of Ireland and the Troubles: these are limber, rangy, exquisite poems. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I would recommend any of the following: The Vivisector , Patrick White Waterland , Graham Swift The Handmaid’s Tale , Margaret Atwood The Book of Evidence , by John Banville A Disaffection , James Kelman Amongst Women , John McGahern Reading in the Dark , Seamus Deane Grace Notes , Bernard MacLaverty The Gathering , by Anne Enright Eileen , Ottessa Moshfegh One Lark, One Horse (2018) is Michael Hofmann’s first new collection in nearly twenty years. Appearing shortly, into the cacophonous white noise of self-promotion that currently passes for poetry, Hofmann shows us again how to write. The three novels on the shortlist that I haven’t yet read."