ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
Latest editorial
Addictive exposure of life in a Mexican drug cartel
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Kingdom Cons
by Yuri Herrera,
(An Other Stories, £8.99)
TO WRITE about Mexico and its narco problem today is to venture into a world full of paradoxes, deep complexities and ultimately violent power struggles.
That's what Yuri Herrera has done in a debut novel that unravels not only the recent history of the country but also how it is shaped by narco violence, patronage and corruption.
Similar stories
LEO BOIX reviews two powerful Latin American novels in which myth and crime fiction expose the deadly consequences of patriarchy, clandestine abortion and state violence
DAVID RABY explains the background of the recent upheavals in Mexico
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin