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, May 1 2023
LEO BOIX reviews a novella by Peruvian writer August Higa Oshiro, a powerful book by young Colombian author Lorena Salazar Masso, and three poetry pamphlets, by Puerto Rican Sabrina Ramos Ruben, Venezuelan Eleonora Requena and Brazilian Tatiana Nascimento
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
AN ELDERLY university professor from Lima wanders through the streets of the Peruvian capital after being forced out of his lifelong job. His name is Katzuo Nakamatsu, and like the book's author, he is the son of Japanese immigrants in Peru.
The despondent literature professor quickly descends into an abyss of human consciousness and abandonment as he begins to explore, like a dejected flaneur, not only his deteriorating state of mind but the poor neighbourhoods of Lima and the desperate people that inhabit them at night.
Katzuo’s journey is one of self-discovery to make sense of his Japanese roots and search for the meaning of life, death, and desire.
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CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
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