The books I read in 2025

Sabahattin Ali, Madonna In a Fur Coat 

Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm 

Eric Ambler, The Light of Day

Inio Asano, Solanin 

John Franklin Bardin, The Deadly Percheron 

Richard Bassett, Last Days in Old Europe 

Cara Black, Murder on the Left Bank

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield

Alan Booth, The Roads to Sata

Joseph Brodsky, Watermark

Jonathan Buckley, One Boat 

Charles Burns, Black Hole 
Len Deighton, Funeral in Berlin 

Len Deighton, The IPCRESS File

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, The Son of Man 

Guy Delisle, Muybridge

Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitriou, Logicomix

Nick Drnaso, Sabrina

Geoff Dyer, Homework 
Mathias Enard, The Deserters

Richard J Evans, The Hitler Conspiracies 

Jacqueline Feldman, Precarious Lease
John Fosse, Vaim 
Gregor Hens, The City and the World

Shōtarō Ikenami, The Samurai Detectives 

Nora Krug, Heimat 
Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection 

John le Carré, Call for the Dead
John le Carré, The Looking Glass War 

John le Carré, The Night Manager

John le Carré, Smiley’s People 

John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold 

Richard McGuire, Here

Léo Malet, Sunrise Behind the Louvre 

Saadat Hasan Manto, Mottled Down
Javier Marías, Tomás Nevinson 

Seicho Matsumoto, Suspicion 

Joris Mertens, Dry Cleaned

Robert Penn, The Man who Made Things out of Trees

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet 

Anthony Price, The Labyrinth Makers 
Anthony Price, Other Paths to Glory

Michael Pye, Antwerp: The Glory Years

Nicola Rayner, The Paris Dancer 
Ernesto Sabato, The Tunnel 

Georges Simenon, The Venice Train

Giles Smith, Lost in Music

W Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando
Richard Stark, The Sour Lemon Score

Lizzy Stewart, Alison

Olga Tokarczuk, House of Day, House of Night  
Janwillem van de Wetering, The Maine Massacre 

Robert van Gulik, The Chinese Gold Murders

Seishi Yokomizo, The Little Sparrow Murders

Seishi Yokomizo, Murder at the Black Cat Cafe 

Lea Ypi, Free
Alejandro Zambra, Chilean Poet 

Alejandro Zambra, Childish Literature (57)

 

The books I read in 2024

Svetlana Alexievich, Boys in Zinc

Eric Ambler, A Kind of Anger

Paul Auster, Baumgartner

Alexander Baron, The Human Kind

Dino Buzzati, The Singularity

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Fernando Cervantes, Conquistadores

Len Deighton, Mexico Set

Len Deighton, London Match

Guy Delisle, Hostage

Guy Delisle, Jerusalem

Annie Ernaux & Marc Marie, The Use of Photography

Brecht Evens, The Wrong Place

György Faludy, My Happy Days in Hell

Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves*

Jon Fosse, Melancholy I–II

Jon Fosse, A Silent Language

Anna Funder, Stasiland

Eduardo Galeano, Football in Sun and Shadow

Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

Michael Gilbert, Games Without Rules

Robert Harris, Fatherland

Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries

Chester Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol

Sven Holm, Termush

Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains

Dorothy B Hughes, In a Lonely Place

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Train

Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day

Stanislaw Len, The Futurological Congress

Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Baron Bagge

Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Count Luna

Alexander Lernet-Holenia, I was Jack Mortimer

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

Dick Lochte, Sleeping Dog

Amin Maalouf, On Identity

Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Groucho Marx, Groucho & Me

Seicho Matsumoto, Point Zero

Roger McGough, The Collected Poems

Will McPhail, In

Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe

Edogawa Rampo, The Black Lizard

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Nicholas Royle, Shadow Lines

Akimitsu Takagi, The Noh Mask Murders

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

Nigel Townson, The Penguin History of Modern Spain

Martin Walker, The Resistance Man

Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep

Seishi Yokomizo, The Devil's Flute Murders (52)

* Book of the year

The books I read in 2023

Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy

Yukito Ayatsuji, The Mill House Murders

Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches

Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters

Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur

Richard Brautigan, In watermelon sugar

Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

Gerald Brenan, South from Granada

Natasha Brown, Assembly

Dino Buzzati, Catastrophe and Other Stories

Dino Buzzati, A Love Affair

Jen Calleja, Vehicle

Edward Chisholm, A Waiter in Paris*

Jeremy Cooper, Brian 

Michael Crummey, River Thieves

Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

Len Deighton, Berlin Game

Len Deighton, SS-GB

Maureen Duffy, Capital

Victor E Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Mathias Enard, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

CS Forester, Plain Murder

Jon Fosse, Morning and Evening 

Jon Fosse, A Shining

Jon Fosse, Trilogy

Willem Frederik Hermans, The Darkroom of Damocles

Willem Frederik Hermans, An Untouched House

Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go

Florian Huber, Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Anna Kavan, Ice

Claire Keegan, Foster

Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence

Thea Lenarduzzi, Dandelions

Norman Lewis, The Tomb in Seville

AJ Liebling, Between Meals

Léo Malet, 120 rue de la Gare

Léo Malet, The Rats of Montsouris

Adam Mars-Jones, Box Hill

Robert McLiam Wilson & Donovan Wylie, The Dispossessed

Laurent Mauvignier, The Birthday Party

Clemens Meyer, While We Were Dreaming

Jan Morris, Spain

Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

Magdalen Nabb, The Innocent

Cesare Pavese, The Beautiful Summer

Rebecca Pawel, The Summer Snow

David Piper, Trial by Battle

Emeric Pressburger, The Glass Pearl

Edogawa Rampo, Beast in the Shadows

Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever

Olga Ravn, The Employees

Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron

Joe Sacco, Palestine

Leonardo Sciascia, The Knight and Death

Leonardo Sciascia, The Wine-Dark Sea

Georges Simenon, Death Threats

Georges Simenon, The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Peter Watts, Denmark Street

EB White, Here is New York

Seishi Yokomizo, Death on Gokumon Island

Alejandro Zambra, The Private Life of Trees

Nell Zink, Avalon (67)

 

* Book of the year

The books I read in 2022

Matthieu Aikins, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water
Eric Ambler, The Mask of Demetrios
Kjell Askildsen, Everything Like Before
Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Dominique Barbéris, A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray
Julian Barnes, Elizabeth Finch
Julian Barnes, Keeping an Eye Open
Julian Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen
Kirsty Bell, The Undercurrents
Michael Bracewell, Souvenir
Jorge Carrión, Bookshops
Nick Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom
Teju Cole, Open City
Moyra Davey, Index Cards
Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
Claudia Durastanti, Strangers I Know
Geoff Dyer, The Last Days of Roger Federer
Brecht Evens, The City of Belgium
Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire
Camilla Grudova, The Doll’s Alphabet
Gregor Hens, Nicotine
Marit Kapla, Osebol
David Keenan, For the Good Times
David Keenan, Industry of Magic & Light
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn
Martin Limón, The Joy Brigade
Cameron McCabe, The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
Ross Macdonald, Meet Me at the Morgue
Seichō Matsumoto, Tokyo Express
Ana María Matute, The Island
Haruki Murakami, T
Magdalen Nabb, The Marshal at the Villa Torrini
PJ O’Rourke, Holidays in Hell
Musa Okwonga, One of Them
Pete Paphides, Broken Greek
Richard Powers, Bewilderment
Joseph Roth, Hotel Savoy
Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth
Philippe Sands, East West Street
Uwe Schütte, Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany
Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair
Richard Sennett, Building and Dwelling
George Sims, The Last Best Friend*
Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams, Diego Garcia
Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō
Rupert Thomson, Barcelona Dreaming
Charlotte Van den Broeck, Bold Ventures
Janwillem van de Wetering, The Perfidious Parrot
Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves
Alejandro Zambra, Bonsai (52)

* Book of the year

All the books I read in 2020 and 2021

Kobo Abe, The Ruined Map

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer

Svetlana Alexievich, Second-hand Time

Carlos Manuel Álvarez, The Fallen

Daniel Anselme, On Leave

Bernardo Atxaga, Nevada Days

Yukito Ayatsuji, The Decagon House Murders

Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn

Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat

Polly Barton, Fifty Sounds

Quentin Bates, Cold Comfort

David Bellos, Jacques Tati

Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond

Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19

Matt Benton Rees, The Fourth Assassin

Laurent Binet, Civilisations

Cara Black, Murder on the Champ de Mars

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, The Passenger

Kate Briggs, This Little Art

Craig Brown, One Two Three Four

Dino Buzzati, Poem Strip

Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

Jonathan Coe, Mr Wilder and Me

Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus

Colin Cotterill, Six and a Half Deadly Sins

Gioacchino Criaco, Black Souls

Frédéric Dard, The Executioner Weeps

Frédéric Dard, Crush

Augusto De Angelis, The Murdered Banker

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard

Brian Dillon, Suppose a Sentence

David Diop, At Night All Blood Is Black

Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road 

Garry Disher, The Dragon Man

Garry Disher, Port Vila Blues

Stuart Douglas, Shuggie Bain

David Downing, Jack of Spies

Geoff Dyer, See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

Mathias Enard, Zone

Annie Ernaux, The Years

Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Things We’ve Seen

Jon Fosse, The Other Name (Septology I-II)*

Jon Fosse, I is Another (Septology III-V)*

Jon Fosse, A New Name (Septology VI-VII)*

Jon Fosse, Scenes from a Childhood

Alan Furst, Under Occupation

Gaito Gazdanov, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart

Rainald Goetz, Rave

Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights

Phil Harrison, The Age of Static

John Hersey, Hiroshima

Andrew Humphreys, Raving upon Thames

Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon

Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, The Boy in the Suitcase

Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor

David Keenan, This is Memorial Device

Philip Kerr, Hitler’s Peace

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle 6

Karl Ove Knausgaard & Fredrik Ekelund, Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game

Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café

Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear

Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream

Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell

Seicho Matsumoto, A Quiet Place

Fernanda Melchior, Hurricane Season

Clemens Meyer, Bricks and Mortar

Leonard Michaels, The Nachman Stories

Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

Shigeru Mizuki, Showa 1926-39

Patrick Modiano, Missing Person

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular

Magdalen Nabb, The Monster of Florence

Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Santiago

Howard Norman, The Northern Lights

James O’Brien, How to Be Right

Andrew O’Hagan, Mayflies

David Olusuga, Black and British

Eliot Pattison, The Lord of Death

David Peace, Tokyo Redux

Roberto Perone, The Second Life of Inspector Canessa

Philippa Perry, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

Leo Perutz, Saint Peter’s Snow

Arthur Phillips, The King at the Edge of the World

Chris Power, A Lonely Man

Ian Rankin, A Song for the Dark Times

Robin Robertson, The Long Take

Marilynne Robinson, Jack

Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector

Salman Rushdie, Quichotte

Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

Leonardo Sciascia, A Simple Story 

Anna Seghers, Transit

Jorge Semprun, The Long Voyage

Adania Shibli, Minor Detail

Soji Shimada, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Georges Simenon, Sunday

Georges Simenon, Death Threats

Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory

Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Masako Togawa, The Lady Killer

Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

William Trevor, Last Stories

Janwillem van de Wetering, The Sergeant’s Cat

Hilde Vandermeeren, The Scorpion’s Head

Luis Fernando Verissimo, The Spies

Tarjei Vesaas, The Ice Palace

Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris

Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment

Peter Wahloo, The Lorry

Edmund White, The Flâneur

Timothy Williams, Big Italy

Qiu Xiaolong, Enigma of China

Seishi Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders

Seishi Yokomizo, The Inugami Curse

Shuichi Yoshida, Villain

Nell Zink, Doxology (120)

* Book(s) of the year(s)

Avian invasion

It's the harsh 'Sqruawck!' that often alerts you to their presence. Then there is the flash of fluorescent green in the sky. If they're perched in a tree, you may even get a glimpse of red beak.

As a resident of Richmond, I'm terribly proud of our parakeet population. A chance sighting during the day feels like a cheery greeting from the gods, a bright hint of good fortune and conviviality.

Now, Paradise Road, the 'extremely small' publisher behind writer Peter Watts's estimable investigation of Battersea Power Station, Up In Smoke, has produced The Parakeeting of London, by 'gonzo ornithologists' Nick Hunt and Tim Mitchell. A delightful trawl through the history and mythology of our cocksure neighbours, it's interspersed with many wonderful interviews with random passersby, whose views frequently stray into chance musings on immigration and belonging.

It's a terrific read and you can order a copy from Paradise Road, or ask your local bookshop to get it in.

Not so slight return

Gangway are back, back, back! The Danish pop group, who split up in 1998, release a fantastic new album, Whatever It Is, on 5 April. Fêted with multiple awards in their home country, their biggest moment in the UK probably came with dissolute single My Girl and Me (1986).

Gangway's first album The Twist, with its echoes of The Smiths, came out back in 1984; Whatever It Is feels appropriately like the follow-up to the band's final, seventh, That's Life (1996). In the spirit of experimentation on that album, Whatever It Is is completely contemporary - as if That's Life had been moved forward in time.

The songwriting is as lovely as ever, as evidenced on first single Colourful Combinations, augmented by some fascinating sounds: there's a great mix from track Whatever… to the penultimate Exit, with its sample reference to where they left off 23 years ago - a hiatus worthy of filmmakers Whit Stillman, Terrence Malick or Roy Andersson. Second single Don't Want to Go Home, reworked from songwriter Henrik Balling's The Quiet Boy side project, sits particularly well here (I love, again, the odd noise at the end).

The band intend to back up this tremendous achievement with a series of live dates throughout the year. You can find links to the album and more on the band's Facebook page.

New from the BFI

Some exciting news: I've contributed a piece about Georges Simenon to the booklet accompanying a new, dual format edition of 1967 film Stranger in the House. This adaptation of the Belgian author's novel Les inconnus dans la maison (1940) by director Pierre Rouve stars James Mason alongside Geraldine Chaplin and Bobby Darin. It's been released as part of the BFI's Flipside strand - you can read more about it and order a copy here. As the image on the booklet cover declares: 'A great Simenon becomes a great film.'

Merry Christmas!

After a slightly uninspiring start, Harry Gruyaert's covers for Penguin's continuing Maigret reissues are getting really good. The Flemish House (number 14) is out now, followed by The Madman of Bergerac in January (Liberty Bar is out in March). And there's a hardback edition of the first four books in an edition originally designed by author Georges Simenon.

Happy Christmas and all the very best for 2015!

The Maigret Circle

A rare post to pull together a few developments in the Simenon universe, which seems to be expanding as Penguin floods bookstores with its new Maigret translations: number eight in the series, The Grand Banks Café (previously The Sailor's Rendez-Vous) is due out 5 June. It's a shame no bookshops have had any offers on these new imprints to tempt me to augment my complete, if ramshackle, Maigret collection, but Penguin will get me out for the English-language debut of The Mahé Circle (1944), translated by Siân Reynolds and released simultaneously with The Grand Banks…

One of the prolific author's non-Maigret, romans durs, The Mahé Circle (cover image above) is an intriguing addition to Simenon's translated catalogue, in which the good Dr Mahé is trapped in a bleak infatuation on his recurring family holiday in Porquerolles - the island off the Côte d'Azur and the setting for My Friend Maigret (1949), one of the dozen or so books featured in Penguin's previous, apparently ill-fated Simenon revival back in 2003. A little down the coast, the Cannes Film Festival has hosted the premiere of Mathieu Amalric's intriguing adaptation of The Blue Room (1955), starring the actor-director alongside Stéphanie Cléau and Léa Drucker (here's the poster).

No doubt all this and more will be mulled over by biographers Pierre Assouline and Patrick Marnham when they share the stage at the Institut Français on 1 June. Their discussion follows a screening of one of my favourite Simenon adaptations, M Hire, as part of the Institut's all too short Noir is the Colour season.

Sickert at Tate Britain

'Taste is the death of a painter' - Walter Richard Sickert, 1908


This week Tate Britain officially reopened its doors after a two-year renovation; it celebrates this weekend with a 'house-warming party'. The new rehang, sponsored by BP, arranges 500 years of British art chronologically, throwing up a number of juxtapositions and surprises.

If you want to trace the work of one artist through the BP Walk through British Art, you could do worse than follow the career of Walter Sickert. The German-born artist first appears halfway round Tate Britain's west wing in the room dedicated to the 1840s - Café des Tribunaux, Dieppe (c1890) - and continues to the front of the east wing: Miss Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Isabella of France (1932).

The theatre crops up in early, Impressionistic, Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford (1892), though his fascination is given an unsettling, haunting twist in Brighton Pierrots (1915). In between, La Hollandaise (c1906) perhaps represents the peak of his Camden Town nudes.

Unfortunately, there's no room for Ennui (c1914), and I'd love to see his 1935 portraits of the Martin family, but on the way are Sickert's contemporaries: the Camden Town and Bloomsbury groups, Augustus John and his associates, and the Vorticists. Following Dulwich Picture Gallery's recent exhibition, 'A Crisis of Brilliance', the work of a group of Slade artists from a century ago shines especially brightly: David Bomberg (The Mud Bath, 1914), Stanley Spencer (Swan Upping at Cookham, 1915-19), CRW Nevinson (La Mitrailleuse, 1915), Paul Nash (Dead Sea, 1940-1) and Mark Gertler's wonderful Merry-Go-Round (1916).

Tout Maigret

In perhaps a belated tribute to the 110th anniversary of writer Georges Simenon's birth, Penguin is reprinting the full catalogue of his Inspector Maigret novels in new translations. The first of 75 books, Pietr the Latvian, is out this week, translated by David Bellos, and the rest will follow at one a month. The current calendar runs to The Saint-Fiacre Affair (number 13), which is due December 2014.

Penguin has tried remarketing Simenon twice in the past decade, with limited success. In 2003, on his centenary, a series of Maigrets was published in Penguin Classics, with covers by Keenan, alongside a handful of the author's notorious romans durs (as Modern Classics). Problems with Penguin's move to a new warehouse may have been to blame at the time, and three years later some of the Maigrets were repackaged once again, this time as pocketbooks.

This is an audacious move for what may have become an acquired taste for crime connoisseurs, and Pietr the Latvian (Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett in Daphne Woodward's 1963 translation, pictured) is no bad place to start; 10 Maigrets were published in 1931 and Simenon always said this was the first to be completed. The template is established here, alongside the introduction of other favourite characters including Madame Maigret, while Simenon can investigate one of his favourite themes: identity.

The current crop is branded "Inspector Maigret" and returns to the stock cover images of the Modern Classics*; the books are more faithful to the original titles and some of the goodies that await include The Night at the Crossroads (due April 2014) and The Bar on the Seine (October 2014). The problem for many fans is whether to invest once more in these new imprints, but what a happy problem!

*UPDATE I note from the estimable Caustic Cover Critic that the cover images have been specially commissioned from Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert. I'm not convinced by them but fair play to Penguin for their commitment and, darn it, this makes these new editions all the more collectable.

Pet Shop Boys' Electric revival

'I believe in ecstasy/ The times we've had, you and me/ Friends we've met along the way/ Partied every night and day/ And I know we'll meet again' - Postscript, Pet Shop Boys

At the end of their 1993 album, Very, Pet Shop Boys paid homage to the rave era in a secret track, Postscript. It's a cliché, but it'd be great to hear an echo of final track Vocal at the end of new album Electric. Instead, we get a hint of it at the start of techno opener, Axis. (Rather brilliantly, the nine songs on Electric were recorded, and are sequenced, in alphabetical order.)

Axis could almost be the song vocalist Neil Tennant is singing about in dance paean Vocal, which is the new single, out 28 July: 'I like the singer/ He's lonely and strange/ Every track has a vocal/ And that makes a change.' There's something of revisiting Being Boring here - 'Everyone I hoped would be around has come along... And the feeling of the ones around us all is strong'; very much of the moment, this is also an album of echoes.

The songs bookend the Boys' most dance-influenced album since Very's limited-edition companion, Relentless, abetted by producer Stuart Price. While Price had Madonna sampling Abba (Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!) for Hung Up (2005), however, here the Boys pick up Henry Purcell (via Michael Nyman's 1982 soundtrack for The Draughtsman's Contract?) for Love is a Bourgeois Contract.

One of the album's stand-outs, Love is... opens with Coldplay-style synth strings, which give way to rave chords as if to say, 'The kings are dead, long live the Boys.' (There's a lot of fading in and out on this album and, perhaps my only criticism, some slightly shonky key changes.)

There's lots of Englishness, though: Love is... has Tennant 'taking my time for a long time/ Putting my feet up a lot... I've been thinking how I can't be bothered/ To wash the dishes or remake the bed'. Instead, in an echo of I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing's 'dancing to the Rite of Spring', he finds he 'could dance instead.' In another echo, you could sing the chorus of PSB's first hit from 1985, West End Girls, over the start of Thursday, which features Example and deserves to be a giant summer hit.

Elsewhere Bolshy is boosted by Italo-house piano stabs, the Boys follow the anti-war message of After All (from their 2005 soundtrack to Battleship Potemkin) with a cover of Bruce Springsteen's The Last to Die and - my favourite - they go delightfully bonkers Shouting in the Evening. The revival follows hard on the heels of the best tracks from their last album, Elysium, which was released only 10 months ago, Invisible and Breathing Space.

Remarkably, Electric is Pet Shop Boys' 12th studio album in a 27-year career, now - exactly 20 years on, is it their best since their fifth, Very? Yes, actually.

Winter of Discontent and Tahrir Square

Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the focus of protest in Egypt just as it was over two years ago. On 10 February 2011 a film crew led by director Ibrahim El Batout and featuring Egyptian actors Amr Waked (pictured) and Farah Youssef began filming among the protestors. The scene they shot imagined the fall of Mubarak – the next day the president resigned.

The material became the climax of Winter of Discontent, which screens at the Ciné Lumière on Wednesday 3 July as part of the Shubbak Festival. It screened at the same venue in the London Film Festival 2012, when I met Waked. Known internationally for roles in Syriana and Salmon Fishing in Yemen, he told me about filming Winter of Discontent amid the protests…

'I got involved from the very first day of the pitch. It was a very spontaneous reaction, the director, Ibrahim El Batout, called me and asked me if I wanted to do something about what was happening in Egypt.

'I had been on the square every day. You felt that whatever function we played as people who are known to encourage people to take to the streets and not fear was already done, and if I leave the square and start doing something I think the square will stay alive. I thought it was time to do something we know best, which is make a film.

'I went and met him the same day with cameras and sound, and I called a DOP friend of mine who filmed the film. We all met in the square thinking the guy wants to do a documentary about what’s happening, and we find an actress with him and then he pitches the story. It was very vague, it wasn’t as developed as the film is.

'The director sat with the writers, and they came out with a brief structure on how the film would develop and how the dramatic progression would go. It was almost 12 pages, which we didn’t want to develop further because what we had shot before was purely improvised so we wanted to keep that sense of improvisation in the whole film and we did.

'The performances in the film – I’m not talking about mine, of course, I’m talking about everybody else – the smallest shot of an actor saying the tiniest thing is so powerful and so real. That’s a very different quality in Arabic films of today to find this guy who comes in and out of the scene for a few seconds. They’re usually not very well rooted and you feel somehow they choose them like that so the star would shine but we don’t have that in our film, everybody shines.

'That was very powerful and it’s very difficult to think how we can do that again because we had so much energy from the square and what was happening, which was enormous. I hope we can find that energy in other topics.'

Five things to watch out for at Eurovision

1. Old is gold

Alongside host Sweden, only big spenders France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are guaranteed a place in the Eurovision Song Contest final on 18 May - Germany won in 2010 (for Lena’s Satellite), but none of the so-called 'big five' had previously won since Katrina and the Waves in 1997 (Love Shine a Light); the UK is trying to reproduce her success by having Bonnie Tyler fly the flag this year with Believe in Me. Semi-finals to decide which countries join them in the final take place on 14 and 16 May.

2. Nul points?

Expect much joshing at the expense of Norway, as the country has come bottom on 10 occasions, though they have won three times - in 1985, 1995 and 2009. I'd love Margaret Berger (pictured) to win with the stonking I Feed You My Love but suspect it's one of those that's too good to come out top.

3. Irish-ise

Ireland have won a record seven times and their entry this year, Ryan Dolan’s Only Love Survives, is fine radio pop, but their position as European favourites has been undermined by the explosion of former Soviet states on the scene. 

4. All tied up

Iceland has had some of the most unusual entries over the years - including former drag queen Paul Oscar, who instituted a perennial taste for bondage outfits in the competition in 1997 - and is one of the better-performing countries over time who have never won. I don't think they'll make it this year with long-haired Eythor Ingi’s ballad Ég Á Líf (I Am Alive), though - but look out for fellow nearly rans Malta, represented this year by Gianluca’s enjoyable, TV-friendly Tomorrow.

5. Hebrew times

Songs performed in English have won 24 times over the past 54 years – Hebrew has dominated three times and Israel tends to perform strongly, but can Moran Mazor (Rak Bishvilo) match their last winner back in 1998: transsexual Dana International and Diva?

Old pop stars don't retire, they go digital

The first generation to have grown up listening to pop music is getting on now, so it's no surprise pop stars are also entering old age. On 8 January, his 66th birthday, David Bowie announced his first album for more than a decade, The Next Day - released last month. Its first single, Where Are We Now?, sounds deliberately frail, which many critics linked to Bowie's heart surgery in 2004, and references to Berlin sites from the Low heydays add to its poignancy.

If anything, the rest of the album bristles with the vigour of late-'80s outing Tin Machine, and a similar vitality can be found on Delta Machine - the 13th studio album in 33 years from Depeche Mode, whose band members' average age is 51. Pet Shop Boys - Neil Tennant (58) and Chris Lowe (53) - have revealed they'll be releasing their 12th studio album, Electric, in June. And French pop icon Etienne Daho, 57, has just announced new work and a series of concerts in Paris for next February.

Unlike the visual arts or writing, pop music is not known for creative longevity - it is traditionally a youngster's game, though pop musicians may go onto innovate in other fields: David Byrne has worked in film and theatre for more than 30 years; Pet Shop Boys premiered ballet The Most Incredible Thing in 2011 and scored Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin back in 2004; Patti Smith is noted as a writer and photographer, now.

While older artists may sound stupid aping new genres (Paul McCartney's the Fireman, anyone?), musicians like Bowie and Radiohead have been quick to grasp the opportunities afforded by new technologies - notably digital release - which may go some way to explaining their current, prolific output. Secure of their fan base, Pet Shop Boys will release Electric through Kobalt Label Services - which released Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Push the Sky Away in February - barely nine months after their last, Elysium.

In the concert arena, however, women lead the way, as evidenced by Blondie, Joan Jett and Laurie Anderson - or take this year's Meltdown on the South Bank (14-23 June), tickets for which go on sale this week. The 80-year-old Yoko Ono has selected Siouxsie, Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith among her line-up. Who said girl power's dead?

Going to the dogs: literary satire after the crash

Thanks to the great Caustic Cover Critic's recommendation, I've just enjoyed what has become one of my favourite reads ever: Going to the Dogs (1931), by Erich Kästner. Subtitled 'The Story of a Moralist', this adult novel by the author of Emil and the Detectives tells the story of 32-year-old copywriter Jakob Fabian who's struggling to make his way in Berlin following the crash of 1929.

Stories set in the time of the Weimar Republic are perennially popular, but this is a real humdinger, featuring unsatisfied wives - including a nymphomaniac brothel keeper - and a cabaret of the insane. There's pathos, too, in Fabian's relationships with his mother, his aspiring-actress girlfriend Cornelia, and his talented and generous best friend Labude.

I was reminded of Belgian author Willem Elsschot's Cheese, published by Granta, in which the author's perennial everyman Frans Laarmans fills his home with 22 tonnes of Edam he's unable to sell on. Roughly contemporaneous, the two books depict a world tipping over into desperation, while their authors never lose faith in the warmth of the human heart.

It also brought to mind William Gerhardie's wonderful satires, such as Doom (Prion), which predates these works by only a few years. Last year the novelist William Boyd invoked Gerhardie as a sort of morality tale: initially fêted, Gerhardie wrote no books for the last four decades of his life and is now little known. 'He's an awful warning of how easy it is to stop writing,' Boyd told Metro.

And then there's the marvellous Albert Cossery, who, like Kästner, has been championed by New York Review Books. Though he died aged 94 (in 2008), Cossery produced less than one, slim, book for each decade of his life. Cynical they may be, but that doesn't make them any less true; alongside the other works mentioned here, they're truly appropriate for our times.

PS I note Cossery's Laziness in the Fertile Valley (1948) - with a foreword by Henry Miller - is due to be published in November by New Directions, who already publish his A Splendid Conspiracy (1975) and The Colors of Infamy (1999). Can someone remind me nearer the time, please? Thanks.

The long films' Good Friday

Easter weekend's here, so what better time for me to rework this piece I did for Little White Lies (Feb/Mar 2007) ahead of a lengthy visit to the cinema...

During my university finals I stayed in every Saturday night, but not because I was swotting for my exams. For 13 weeks, in a quietened house, I sat in front of the television for the second part of Edgar Reitz's Heimat chronicle - all 25-and-a-half hours of it. On its Munich premiere, in 1992, it broke the record for the longest film ever screened commercially. And that’s after the first Heimat (pictured), which was also broadcast on BBC2, came in over 15 hours long.

You’ll have guessed that for me, length does matter. Some films are long because of the tradition they come from - Bollywood in the case of popular crossover film, Lagaan (2001), which is nearly as long as the cricket match at its centre - or their source, although in the case of Sergei Bondarchuk's eight-hour War and Peace (1967), reading the book might be quicker. Lost in Hollywood history is Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) - reputed to run up to 10 hours but cut by the studio to something nearer two and never seen in its intended glory again.

The master of the extended film is French director Jacques Rivette. His 1961 début, Paris Nous Appartient (1961), a tale of paranoia among avant-garde types that plays like a zombie flick for intellectuals, is 140 minutes long. By 1971 he hit the big time, literally: Out One runs to 12 hours, cut to a relatively prolix three-and-a-quarter hours in 1974. The same year's Céline and Julie Go Boating positively fizzes along and is the unlikely inspiration for Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985).

Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse (pictured, 1991) is a ravishing portrait of the relationship between the artist and his muse. For pretty much four hours you get to stare at a naked Emmanuelle Béart. It's certainly one of her best roles, as it makes the most of her incredible beauty and a steely, defensive, character beneath. Michel Piccoli is the artist with whom she shares this watchful dance; the passions may be muted but what emerges on screen is absolutely devastating. And this is the glory of long films: to get as much under the skin of something as you ever can; this is cinema where viewers are afforded space to think.

In Beyond the Hills, currently showing in cinemas, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu builds up a claustrophobic picture of life at an isolated, orthodox monastery using repetition and long takes. Hungarian director Béla Tarr is celebrated for his long takes: for the first 17 minutes of his seven-hour magnum opus, Sátántangó (1994), you don't see a human face - only a group of cows in a farmyard. It's an opening that could be said to be reflected in Mexican director Carlos Reygadas' wonderful Post Tenebras Lux - 25 scenes over two hours, and a dog called Bela, coincidentally.

None of these directors expects you to watch without a break, as attested by screenings of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - late last year at the BFI Southbank - or four and a half hours of Rauol Ruiz' The Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) - at the Curzon Soho. I watched Beyond the Hills and Post Tenebras Lux at London's Renoir cinema, in the Brunswick Centre, the same place I saw a revival of Jean Eustache's three-and-a-half hour The Mother and the Whore (1973) a generation ago. The Renoir also hosted the final part - thus far - of Edgar Reitz’ Heimat trilogy.

Heimat (1984) is a tightly controlled family drama spanning Germany's 20th-century experience set in the north-Rhein region of Germany: the Hunsrück. Eight years later, Reitz turned to the youngest son of the clan’s university years in 1960s Munich; the memories of friendships and adventures are so strong that I’m sure they’ve even replaced some of my own student time.

Like Wolfgang Petersen's five-hour - in its uncut version - Das Boot (pictured, 1981) and contemporary Italian family drama The Best of Youth (six hours), which won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes in 2003, Heimat was made for TV - as was Lars von Trier's brilliant, lengthy hospital-set spooker, The Kingdom (1994) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-and-a-half Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), adapted from the book by Alfred Döblin.

In 2004, Reitz felt there was enough left to explore in his overarching theme of belonging to make the whole a trilogy. Heimat 3 - six full-length features - begins with the fall of the Wall but is strangely depressing, perhaps mirroring the writer-director's difficulties in getting it made. 'It took five years of fighting for the funding,' he told me at the time, 'and now it probably wouldn’t work at all.'

Despite this pessimism, Reitz is said to be working on a fourth instalment in the Hunsrück, but what he has already achieved has left an indelible mark: these places, faces, even accents will stay with you forever. It is already over 52 hours long - or an hour a week for a year. That’s as much as I do yoga. Mind you, I could do with a stretch now.

Related post: diving into submarine movies