Paperbacks
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Best new paperbacks: Margo Jefferson, Julian Barnes, Decca AitkenheadThe first paperbacks of the new year offer rich pickings, from Barnes’s meditation on Shostakovitch to Jefferson’s memoir of growing up in the US’s black elite
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The Burrow by Franz Kafka review – a superb new translationNicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: Ranging from a single paragraph to 40-odd pages, these stories of strange animals and clerks oppressed by bouncing balls are richly rewarding
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The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain review – a masterful tale of envy and loveA powerful, nuanced story of the complicated friendship between two boys in wartime Switzerland
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Boys in the Trees by Carly Simon review – singer’s witty self-analysisFrom showbiz anecdotes to illness and exploitation, this autobiography gives us Bohemia with the petals falling off
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Woman on the Edge of Time, 40 years on: 'Hope is the engine for imagining utopia'Marge Piercy, the landmark feminist novel’s author, reflects on the aspirations for a just society that she dramatised in 1976 – and their continuing relevance
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Nicholas Lezard’s best paperbacks of 2016Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting The Buried Giant, Adam Mars-Jones’s hilarious memoir and Sydney Padua’s eye-opening graphic novel are some of this year’s highlights
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Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? review – old age is not for sissiesNicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: bold and honest, hilarious and despairing, this graphic memoir from the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast carefully chronicles the demise of her parents
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The Bitter Taste of Victory by Lara Feigel review – life in the ruins of the ReichNicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: the devastation of postwar Germany as seen through the eyes of cultural figures such as Auden, Orwell and Lee Miller
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Tetris: The Games People Play by Box Brown review – the history of a global phenomenonThis story of idealism, legal wrangling and vast profits reveals a fascinating moment in cultural history
Nicholas Lezard's choice The Story of Pain by Joanna Bourke review – from prayer to painkillers