ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Letters From Latin America: July 21, 2022
New titles from across the continent: fiction by Mexican Juan Pablo Villalobos and Peruvian Katya Adaui and poetry collections by Chilean Veronica Zondek, Peruvian Julia Wong Kcomt and Mexican Adriana Diaz Enciso
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
INVASION of the Spirit People (And Other Stories, £11.99) is Juan Pablo Villalobos sixth novel and one of his most compelling.
The story set in unnamed city where migrants battle against a worrying rise of neofascism, right-wing nationalism and societal paranoias about foreigners.
The main character, a middle-aged man “from the Southern Cone” called Gaston who is best friends with Max, an immigrant who runs a shabby restaurant in the city, and Pol, Max’s son, a young biologist sent to the tundra to research micro-organisms capable of surviving in extreme conditions.
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