Preferable to Starmer he may be, but there is scant sign of a sharp political break in Burnham’s policies so far — while left challenges aren’t making much of a running either, finds ANDREW MURRAY. How can socialism be put back on the map?
I’M ALWAYS on the lookout for what get called “State of the Nation” novels, so was pleased to have come across two of them in the wild recently.
A full-on State of the Nation novel is the kind of social panorama that takes in many levels of society and shows up social issues, a fiction that exposes social exploitation, like Dickens, or describes “The Way We Live Now,” like Trollope’s satire on corruption in Victorian Britain.
A lot of fiction has a very narrow focus on the personal lives of the comfortably off, so fiction doesn’t really have to be a “panorama” to get called “State of the Nation” — it can just present some view of people who worry about how to pay the bills as well as how to live their emotional lives.
In a wide-ranging interview, JEREMY CORBYN talks to Ben Chacko about the difficulties the new Prime Minister faces and why he sees no future in Labour
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
CARL DEATH introduces a new book which explores how African science fiction is addressing climate change



