Vol. 36 No. 17 · 11 September 2014

Eliot Weinberger

From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha by Donald S. Lopez Jr. Chicago, 289 pp., £18, April 2013, 978 0 226 49320 6

In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint by Donald S. Lopez Jr and Peggy McCracken. Norton, 262 pp., £17.99, May 2014, 978 0 393 08915 8

Letters

Catherine Robbe-Grillet, Lawrence Goldman, Denis Lenihan, Janet McAllister, Peter Lewis, Jason Streets, Robert Graham, Max Long, Stephen Low, Martin O’Connor

Frederick Seidel

Poem: ‘To Stop the World from Ending’

Jenny Diski

A Diagnosis

Kathleen Jamie

Three Poems

Katie Stevenson

Robert the Bruce: King of the Scots by Michael Penman. Yale, 443 pp., £25, June 2014, 978 0 300 14872 5

John Lanchester

Short Cuts: On the Official Worry List

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

Jean McNicol

At the NPG: ‘Virginia Woolf’

Keith Gessen

Why not kill them all?

Salma Karmi-Ayyoub

Out of Court

Gerard Russell

Peacock Worship

John Burnside

Three Poems

Donald MacKenzie

Be grateful for drizzle

R.W. Johnson

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister by Michael Jago. Biteback, 390 pp., £25, May 2014, 978 1 84954 683 6

Geoffrey Hawthorn

Wordly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman. Princeton, 740 pp., £27.95, April 2013, 978 0 691 15567 8

The Essential Hirschman edited by Jeremy Adelman. Princeton, 367 pp., £19.95, October 2013, 978 0 691 15990 4

Theo Tait

The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Cape, 215 pp., £16.99, September 2014, 978 0 224 10199 8

Yiannis Baboulias

Tear Gas

Yun Sheng

Decoded: A Novel by Mai Jia, translated by Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne. Allen Lane, 315 pp., £18.99, March 2014, 978 0 14 139147 2