Culture

The Balkans

Blame the rest

Recent Italian novels

Spirits of invention

A womanising gumshoe, anti-corporate satire, literary memories, men from Mars and KGB moles. These are all themes in current Italian fiction

A moon among the lesser stars

Who was the best of Britain’s post-war prime ministers?

Political theory

Forgotten value

French literature

Packing it in

American politics

Borderline case

New fiction

Slenderly

Luxury goods

Dallas on the Arno

Faust, all 21 hours of it

Goethe himself considered his two-part “Faust” to be unstageable. Our reviewer went to Hanover to see if he was right