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    Biography and memoir

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    • Friday, 26 May, 2023
      The best books of the week
      Golden Age — confessions of an everyman

      Wang Xiaobo’s semi-autobiographical account of the final decades of the 20th century in China is both subversive and hilarious

    • Thursday, 25 May, 2023
      The best books of the week
      An Uneasy Inheritance — Polly Toynbee’s memoir of her family and other radicals

      The writer confronts family woes — and the difficulty of championing leftwing causes while hailing from privilege

    • Thursday, 18 May, 2023
      Review
      Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage — the tribulations of the Mandelas

      Jonny Steinberg’s outstanding biography balances sympathy with unflinching accounts of the discord that plagued South Africa’s power couple

    • Wednesday, 19 April, 2023
      ReviewFT Books Essay
      Alternative realities: caring for people with dementia

      With an ageing global population, cases of the disease continue to drastically rise. Two timely and insightful books offer help on how to support the millions of new patients

    • Thursday, 6 April, 2023
      Review
      The Marriage Question — the fascinating doubleness of George Eliot

      Clare Carlisle’s new biography splendidly locates the novelist in her times

    • Tuesday, 14 March, 2023
      Nilanjana Roy
      The persistence of the trauma memoir

      Where should the lines be drawn in the encouragement, promotion and marketing of stories about the misery of others?

    • Thursday, 9 March, 2023
      Africa special
      ‘The Famished Road’ and my quest for the imaginative richness of Africa

      When Ben Okri won the 1991 Booker prize, it was the culmination of a writing journey defined by literary experimentation — and upheaval

    • Wednesday, 1 March, 2023
      Review
      Manchester Unspun — the story of the city’s resurrection

      From the opening of the Haçienda to the property boom, adopted Mancunian Andy Spinoza tells a vivid story with the pride of a native

    • Tuesday, 28 February, 2023
      FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival
      Confessions by Edward Stourton — the journalist re-examines his life

      The BBC presenter reminisces about the scrapes and japes of a life lived inside the establishment

    • Friday, 24 February, 2023
      Review
      Metamorphosis — a magical memoir of a life in pieces

      Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s account of living with multiple sclerosis is driven by his formidable intellect and humanity

    • Friday, 17 February, 2023
      Review
      Voyager — the memory of Pinochet’s victims, written in the stars

      In her extraordinary memoir, Chilean writer Nona Fernández combines astronomy and neuroscience with a refusal to forget

    • Monday, 13 February, 2023
      Review
      Two Sisters by Blake Morrison — the challenge of family memoir

      The poet’s latest book tackles the subject of his sister, who died in 2018 of heart failure

    • Thursday, 2 February, 2023
      Review
      Still Pictures — Janet Malcolm turns the lens on herself

      A sort-of memoir by the pioneering journalist who died in 2021 evades a traditional narrative

    • Tuesday, 24 January, 2023
      ReviewHistory books
      Parisian Days by Banine — model citizen

      Swept along by revolutionary forces, the young émigré seeks to realise her dreams of ‘freedom and fantasy’ in 1920s France

    • Friday, 20 January, 2023
      Review
      Toy Fights: A Boyhood — Don Paterson’s memoir

      The Scottish poet delves into the murky waters of his life and emerges with clarity and wisdom

    • Friday, 20 January, 2023
      FT Weekend podcast30 min listen
      Surviving US healthcare. Plus: Prince Harry’s 'Spare'

      Claire Bushey explores the cost of US healthcare after her treatment for breast cancer. Then, Henry Mance reviews Prince Harry’s autobiography

    • Tuesday, 10 January, 2023
      Review
      Spare by Prince Harry — complain and explain

      The memoir is arguably the most insightful royal book in a generation, yet still leaves readers with many questions about the monarchy unanswered

    • Thursday, 5 January, 2023
      ReviewKatherine Mansfield
      All Sorts of Lives — Katherine Mansfield through her stories

      Biographer Claire Harman uses the great proto-Modernist’s fiction to illuminate her dramatic, short life

    • Friday, 16 December, 2022
      Review
      Confessions by AN Wilson — a ‘multiple personality’

      Essayist-biographer’s memoir evokes Rousseau and Augustine as it charts his life’s dramas and traumas

    • Friday, 9 December, 2022
      ReviewNon-Fiction
      Dickens and Prince — Nick Hornby’s love letter to prolific genius

      Apart from a prodigious output, what artistic traits did the 19th-century novelist share with the late pop musician?

    • Thursday, 8 December, 2022
      Review
      Wild — the wayward life of Peter Beard

      Graham Boynton’s biography turns the spotlight on the American artist and adventurer

    • Wednesday, 7 December, 2022
      Review
      Come Back in September — a literary education in New York

      Darryl Pinckney’s memoir fondly recalls his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick, the doyenne of the world of letters who mentored and supported him

    • Friday, 2 December, 2022
      Review
      Shirley Hazzard by Brigita Olubas — a writer who felt the weight of history

      A deft biography of the Australian-American author illuminates the alchemical interplay of her life and fiction

    • Friday, 2 December, 2022
      Review
      John le Carré: the lover and the letters

      Two very different books reveal the relationship between the former spy and his fiction

    • Thursday, 1 December, 2022
      Review
      Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story — Bono’s heartfelt but wordy memoir

      The U2 singer tells the story of his rise from working-class Dublin lad to rock star activist

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