Hephzibah Anderson

London

Writer, critic, interviewer, event chair etc. Most often found in @ObsNewReview @BBC_Culture @Prospect_uk @TheCriticMag. Author of Chastened (Vintage/Viking).

Articles

Madeleine Thien's new book engages the heart as much as the mind

5 days ago | observer.co.uk | Hephzibah Anderson

This remarkable tale of migration in a flooded future is shot through with drama, history and ideas The Book of RecordsMadeleine ThienGranta, £20, pp368On the twelfth floor of a mysterious housing complex called the Sea, a girl named Lina lives with her ailing father, Wei, refugees both from China’s Foshan in a flooded near-future.
Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark by Dan Richards review – night owls of all feathers

3 weeks ago | msn.com | Hephzibah Anderson

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark by Dan Richards review - night owls of all feathers

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Hephzibah Anderson

As children, we’re primed by literature to think of the night as a time for adventure as well as rest, but by early middle age, we’ve mostly ringfenced its darkness for sleep (or, for the insomniacs among us, anxieties about sleep’s absence). Author Dan Richards is no exception, and it took a nuit blanche stranded 3,600 metres up a Swiss mountain to reawaken his sense of night-time’s vast and varied potential.
‘Consumption cannot fix racism’

3 weeks ago | msn.com | Hephzibah Anderson

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Ship of Dreams; Daly Brightness; Private Passions

3 weeks ago | msn.com | Hephzibah Anderson

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Novelist Kiley Reid: ‘Consumption cannot fix racism’

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Hephzibah Anderson

When Arizona-raised novelist Kiley Reid, 37, debuted five years ago with Such a Fun Age, she attained the kind of commercial and critical success that can jinx a second book, even landing a spot on the 2020 Booker longlist. Instead, Come and Get It – which is published in paperback next month – fulfils the promise, pursuing some of the themes of that first work while also daring to be boldly different.
The week in audio: The Fever; An Inspector Calls on Moscow; Titanic: Ship of Dreams; Daly Brightness; Private Passions

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Hephzibah Anderson

The Fever (Radio 4) | BBC SoundsDrama on 4: An Inspector Calls on Moscow (Radio 4) | BBC SoundsTitanic: Ship of Dreams (Noisier) | BBC SoundsThe Rest Is Football: Daly Brightness (Goalhanger)Private Passions (Radio 3) | BBC SoundsCan Cate Blanchett seriously be considering retirement?
Iraq veteran and film-maker Ray Mendoza: ‘Writing Warfare with Alex Garland was like going to a therapist’

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Hephzibah Anderson

Ray Mendoza, 45, served for more than 16 years as a US Navy Seal and training instructor before leaving to work as a Hollywood military adviser, specialising in choreographing gunfight sequences for movies including Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024). It’s with Garland that he’s now co-written and co-directed the film Warfare, a claustrophobically immersive account of an ill-fated surveillance mission that he survived in Ramadi province, Iraq, in 2006.
In brief: Bad Nature; Bad Friend; The Flitting – review

1 month ago | msn.com | Hephzibah Anderson

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
In brief: Bad Nature; Bad Friend; The Flitting - review

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Hephzibah Anderson

Bad NatureAriel CourageChatto & Windus, £16.99, pp304Diagnosed with terminal cancer on her 40th birthday, Manhattan lawyer Hester has just one item on her bucket list: drive to California and kill her estranged father, then herself. She gets only as far as Pennsylvania before picking up hitchhiker John, a young eco-activist whose own mission complicates Hester’s as they travel from five-star hotels to cult-like communes and Vegas casinos.