I am a writer and editor based in London. My work has appeared in the Guardian, FT Weekend, Prospect, New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, Huff Post UK, White Review,  LA Review of Books, The Calvert Journal, Coda Story and TANK. I write predominantly about literature, culture and the Caucasus – often all three at once.

My most recent piece discusses the Georgian election by way of Russia, the EU, and Georgia’s multi-generational struggle for autonomy. —>

Criticism

  • The Empusium – Olga Tokarczuk’s carnivalesque homage to Thomas Mann

    Financial Times

  • Georgi Gospodinov review — an anatomy of melancholy

    Financial Times

  • The Variations by Patrick Langley review – hearing the voices of the dead

    the Guardian

  • Summer in Baden-Baden — a pilgrim in search of Dostoyevsky’s soul

    Financial Times

  • Jon Fosse’s A Shining — light in the darkness

    Jon Fosse’s A Shining — light in the darkness

    Financial Times

  • Bolla by Pajtim Statovci review – illicit love in the shadow of war

    the Guardian

  • Rombo by Esther Kinsky — oral histories of an Italian earthquake

    Financial Times

  • Where You Come From by Sasa Stanisic – fragmented lives

    Financial Times

  • The Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca – an intimate exposé of totalitarian Romania

    Financial Times

  • Kapka Kassabova’s To the Lake: a vivid blend of travelogue, history and memoir

    New Statesman

  • The Suitcase by Frances Stonor Saunders — baggage reclaim

    Financial Times

  • Scattered All Over the Earth – what it means to belong

    Financial Times

  • ‘I was frightened every single day’: the perils of guarding Stalin

    The Spectator

  • Manaschi by Hamid Ismailov – Better a hell you can agree with

    TLS

  • In Maria Reva’s Kafkaesque satire, puzzled occupants discover their Soviet tower block doesn’t exist

    The Calvert Journal

  • ‘No-Signal Area’: a piercing novel on the villains and victims of capitalism

    The Calvert Journal

  • My Streaming Gem: My Happy Family by Nana Ekvtimishvili

    The Guardian

  • The Possessed — Witold Gombrowicz’s seriously good comic novel

    Financial Times

  • OPIA: A night of performances curated by Ólafur Arnalds

    TANK Magazine

  • The Stronghold by Dino Buzzati — that unnameable feeling of being alive

    Financial Times

  • C.D. Rose’s ‘Who’s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else’

    The White Review

Essays

Profiles

  • Nino Haratischvili: 'I never understood how Georgians could be proud of Stalin'

    the Guardian

  • BEN OKRI: “The thing that we're most in danger of losing is the thing we sometimes seem to abound in”

    TANK Magazine

  • In conversation with Geoff Dyer

    TANK Magazine

  • 'Love’s labours should be lost': Maria Stepanova, Russia's next great writer

    the Guardian

  • JON FOSSE: “Writing is creating a form that is its own universe, rules by its own laws”

    TANK Magazine

  • ‘I wanted this book to be a reconciliation’: Lea Ypi on growing up in communist Albania

    The Calvert Journal

  • VALZHYNA MORT: “A singing voice – and a screaming voice – is the furthest we can stand outside of our bodies”

    TANK Magazine

  • GEORGE SAUNDERS: “The story is anything that keeps you reading”

    TANK Magazine