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Alexander Howard

Alexander Howard

The Conversation

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I wholeheartedly recommend The President: a brilliant revival of a play of decay, terror and revulsion

Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the...

19.04.2024 50

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Marquis de Sade as feminist icon? Angela Carter’s surprising take on a notorious writer

In our feminist classics series, we look at influential books. Social constructs and questions of control are preoccupations the late British writer...

26.03.2024 20

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Can you make a compelling play about economics? The Lehman Trilogy tries – but ultimately comes up short

“Can’t move ‘em with a cold thing, like economics.” So says the modernist, Ezra Pound, in the first section of his epic poem, The Cantos. ...

04.03.2024 30

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Truman Capote was ruined when he published his society friends’ secrets. Was Answered Prayers worth it?

In November 1975, Truman Capote, the proudly gay author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, unveiled the hotly anticipated second...

16.02.2024 20

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

My favourite fictional character: George Smiley is unattractive, overweight, a terrible dresser – and a better spy than James Bond

01.01.2024 6

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Knausgaard’s ambitious new novel imagines Europe’s last decades – ending with an ominous star and the return of the dead

The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard is a 21st-century literary phenomenon. Talked up as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has...

19.12.2023 5

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

With The Pogues, Shane MacGowan perhaps proved himself the most important Irish writer since James Joyce

Known for his music with The Pogues, and perhaps the most important Irish writer since James Joyce, the venerated and critically acclaimed Shane...

01.12.2023 20

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Chekhov called The Seagull ‘a comedy’. The Sydney Theatre Company seems to forget it was a tragedy, too

What is comedy? This is the question I kept coming back to while watching Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, which opened...

28.11.2023 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Belvoir’s The Master and Margarita: astonishingly ambitious, physically demanding and a resounding success

Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult novel The Master and Margarita has inspired many artists. Mick Jagger drew on the novel when penning the...

17.11.2023 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The revamped Prime Minister’s Literary Awards reward ‘fresh ways of seeing’ in 2023

Jessica Au’s precise, poetic novella, Cold Enough for Snow (Giramondo), an elegant meditation on its unnamed narrator’s trip to Japan with her...

16.11.2023 2

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Friday essay: the secret lives of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré – the spymasters shaped by a lack of parental love

In 2022, writer Suleika Dawson published an intimate, refreshingly candid first-hand account of her passionate extramarital affair with David Cornwell...

26.10.2023 10

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

The Exorcist: Believer is a ‘retcon’ film - it imagines none of the sequels exist. This sequel shouldn’t exist, either

Halloween season is here, bringing with it the promise of new horrors at the box office. This year it’s all about renewed cinematic horrors....

16.10.2023 4

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

Jon Fosse wins the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature for giving ‘voice to the unsayable’

Jon Fosse has just been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. The...

06.10.2023 2

The Conversation

Alexander Howard

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