MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
Latest editorial
Compelling contradictions of an anti-capitalist activist
PAUL SIMON recommends the story of a charismatic malcontent
CATHARTIC: Leo Zeilig
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The World Turned Upside Down
by Leo Zeilig
(Iva Valley Books, £7.99)
THIS novel’s protagonist Professor Bianca Ndour is an outsized phenomenon, with her personal and academic contradictions bursting beyond the realistic confines of one mere individual. In many respects, she represents the values and vaulting hopes, as well as the weaknesses, of much of the contemporary left movement.
Writer Leo Zeilig tracks Ndour’s metamorphosis from a comparatively privileged mixed-race bourgeois background to trendy mindfulness self-help author and on to a remorseless and charismatic revolutionary academic.
As such, her intellectual journey reflects that of the anti-capitalist movement since the fall of many socialist states, with the lost wistfulness of the 1990s replaced with a more robust Marxist praxis since.
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