Oxford Review of Books

The Oxford Review of Books (ORB) is a cultural magazine affiliated with Oxford University. Established in the spring of 2017, it releases an issue every term at Oxford. The latest issue came out in November 2019. The ORB features in-depth book reviews and essays, along with diary entries, interviews, and poetry. It has interviewed a variety of notable figures, including politicians, actors, philosophers, historians, poets, classicists, and activists.

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In Review: Dream Count

Mar 3, 2025 | the-orb.org | Sarah Moorhouse

By Sarah Moorhouse At a time when the promise of a massive advance tends to lure superstar novelists into publishing every couple of years, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an outlier: she refuses to be rushed. Dream Count, her first novel in over a decade, is worth the wait. A pandemic novel, it’s about grief, about immigrant experiences and about friendship and love.
Caging Kafka

Nov 3, 2024 | the-orb.org | Ian Ellison

Art by Federica PesciniIan Ellison considers Selected Stories: Franz Kafka, translated and edited by Mark Harman(Harvard University Press 2024) and A Cage Went in Search of a Bird: Ten Kafkaesque Short Stories by Ali Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, Tommy Orange, Yiyun Li, Keith Ridgway, Charlie Kaufman, Elif Batuman, Naomi Alderman, Leone Ross, and Joshua Cohen, introduced by Becca RothfeldAll quotations from the diaries of Franz Kafka are taken from:Franz Kafka, The Diaries, trans.
Atlantis

Oct 19, 2024 | the-orb.org | Nathaniel Rosenthalis

And I was, saw the whole city,perpetually under the weather, yes,the place was sick at heart. Greed,we went under. Still, I missthat city, its cramped excuses, its low skyLiving in that city, it was like you had a feverpillar to post, always something new to see,always some new lover around the corner. Where I came from, that wasn’t just sorrow,it was reason itself, to keep your head up.
"Splinters": The Opposite of a Cocktail-Party

Apr 5, 2024 | the-orb.org | Sarah Moorhouse

Sarah Moorhouse reviews Leslie Jamison's Splinters (Little, Brown and Company, 2024)... The problem with reviewing a book by an author whose previous work you have lapped up and whose every move you follow on Twitter is that it can be hard to evaluate their latest book on its own terms. Leslie Jamison’s Splinters was released at the end of February to enormous fanfare.
Minor Details, Major Insights

Mar 20, 2024 | the-orb.org | Malavika P Pillai

By Malavika P PillaiArt by Jemima StoreyUnder the sombre sky of a rainy city centre, vibrant flags in black, red, green, and white hues stood out distinctly, even when viewed through the misty window. I sat in the warmth of a cafe, watching a chain of protesters waving flags and fervently calling for help to protect people in distress. It offered a glimpse into a world shrouded in suffering and a history of bloodshed.
Small Hours

Feb 7, 2024 | the-orb.org | Imogen Usherwood

By Imogen Usherwood'Small Hours' was a runner-up in the 2023 Oxford Review of Books Short Story Prize. ... Was it really October, the last time you saw him? When you were down visiting Connor—God, all that way just to see Connor, what were you thinking—and you texted him to say you were in town, and he suggested meeting in that new café by the bridge which had opened after you graduated.
Wolfgang Puck's Secret Ingredient

Dec 9, 2023 | the-orb.org | Andy Kovacic

Art by Florence SykesINTERVIEW BY ANDY KOVACICI sat down with Wolfgang Puck on a rainy London day, sheltered in the decadent hotel bar above his London restaurant CUT at 45 Park Lane. Our interview came as a bit of a surprise, a last-minute rendezvous as Wolfgang had recently flown into London for a series of self-promotions in his British fine dining outpost. As he sat across from me, he looked like he had just left the kitchen downstairs. He was wearing his signature ebony chef jacket.
Hyper-Mechanical Reproduction

Dec 6, 2023 | the-orb.org | Oliver Evans

By Oliver Evans Art by Ellen WilkinsonAgainst Hollywood's sequel obsession. ... In 2011, a meme began circulating online featuring an image of two identical versions of the Marvel comics character Spider-Man pointing at one another incredulously. The image was taken from a 1968 animated television series, which featured a villain impersonating the titular arachnid-hominid.
Staging Grief

Nov 29, 2023 | the-orb.org | Katie Kirkpatrick

By Katie KirkpatrickArt by Leya Jasmin Staging grief is a delicate balancing act. The difficulty lies in whether making grief a spectacle, with allocated seats, marketing materials, and lighting states, moves it too far from reality and thus dooms it to inauthenticity. James Fritz’s Lava, first performed in 2018 but recently revived, sets its exploration of grief in the aftermath of a major disaster: an asteroid has hit London, killing thousands.
History as it Should Have Been

Nov 27, 2023 | the-orb.org | Eleanor Clark

Art by Alice PenroseEleanor Clark considers reimagining unarchived lives in Tom Crewe's The New Life (Chatto & Windus 2023) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Summer Will Show (Chatto & Windus 2023). ... Truths needn’t always depend upon facts for their expression’. So says Tom Crewe, in the Afterword to The New Life. The novel is historical fiction: dissociating truth from fact is Crewe’s mission statement. His factual liberties are open, fundamental yet unobtrusive.