WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Letters From Latin America
Reviews of fiction by Mexican Brenda Navarro and Argentinean Claudia Pineiro and of poetry by Nicaraguan-Costa Rican Lester Gomez Medina
CAREFUL CRAFTSMAN: Nicaraguan-Costa Rican writer Lester Gomez Medina
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
EMPTY HOUSES (Daunt Books, £9.99), Mexican writer Brenda Navarro’s first novel, is the devastating story of a mother who loses her small child in a playground somewhere in Mexico and her relentless search to find him.
It is also the story of a working-class woman who has kidnapped the child in order to fulfil her maternal desires and, fittingly, the chapters begin with epigraphs from the work of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska that set the tone for what it is yet to come.
The narrative alternates between the harrowing stories of these two desperate woman as they try to make sense of motherhood, mental and physical abuse and trauma in a novel that questions maternal instincts in patriarchies and the place of women in modern society.
More from this author
LEO BOIX reviews a caustic novel of resistance and womanhood by Buenos Aires-born Lucia Lijtmaer, and an electrifying poetry collection by Chilean Vicente Huidobro
LEO BOIX salutes the revelation that British art has always had a queer pulse, long before the term became cultural currency
Novels by Cuban Carlos Manuel Alvarez and Argentinean Andres Tacsir, a political novella in verse by Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, and a trilogy of poetry books by Mexican cult poet Bruno Dario
LEO BOIX introduces a bold novel by Mapuche writer Daniela Catrileo, a raw memoir from Cuban-Russian author Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and powerful poetry by Mexican Juana Adcock
