Christian Lorentzen

It’s useful to know on opening Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel, A Little Life – currently, a month before the winner is announced, the 3/1 favourite to win the Man Booker Prize – just how much research she did into the experiences and psychological background of Jude St Francis, the book’s central character: ‘No,’ she told an interviewer, ‘I didn’t do any research; Jude came to me fully formed.’

Into​ the doldrums of Obama’s second term, freshman Senator Tom Cotton has trotted forward as the GOP’s new mascot of ostentatious warmongering. He’s the author of the letter signed by 46 Republican senators and sent to Iran’s leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they negotiate with Obama will be overturned when he leaves office. Cotton’s letter was...

In​ the autumn of 2001 Mohamedou Ould Slahi was working in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, setting up computer networks. He was born in the hinterlands, son of a nomadic camel trader, and had picked up the trade in Germany; he went to the University of Duisberg on a scholarship in 1988, at the age of 17. He’d long been a fan of the German national football team. He was also...

It’s been​ five years and ten months. I confess to a bit of nostalgia for the nihilism that came with being governed by George W. Bush. For all the continuities, Obama arouses more earnest responses: apologetics, disappointment, head-shaking, Occupy, Edward Snowden. Bush’s arrogance has turned out to be that of a man destined to spend his golden years painting portraits of...

In August​ a man in the Bronx tied a chain to a pole, wrapped it around his neck, got behind the wheel of his Honda and stepped on the accelerator. The chain severed his head from his body, which crashed through the windscreen and landed on the street when the Honda slammed into a parked car. I can’t remember whether the story flashed across the computer screen or I heard it late at...