SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
I Belong Here
Outstanding travelogue addresses state of nation during tramp along Pennine Way
BRITAIN'S BACKBONE: Wessenden Valley on the Pennine Way
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
I BELONG HERE is an accomplished and emotionally comprehensive extended metaphor, adroitly used by an author seeking the positive repudiation of a hate crime and all that lies behind it.
Anita Sethi’s journey along the Pennine Way, Britain’s “backbone,” was ignited by a vile verbal racist assault — a variation of the “go back to where you came from” trope — on a train as she travelled to a literary festival in Newcastle. Still in long-term trauma, she then suffered the devastation of the death of a much-loved friend.
Her journey serves as a meditation both on her recollection of these specific events but also on the bigger issues faced by a society that diminishes and denudes the opportunities for, and contributions of, its non-white and non-male citizens.
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An absorbing metaphor for contemporary Western societies is recommended by PAUL SIMON
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