The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Many Vietnams
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends an account of the post WWII global movement that allied socialist countries against US imperialism
Korea
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
North Korea, Tricontinentalism, and the Latin American Revolution, 1959–1970
Moe Taylor, Cambridge University Press, £85
A GENERATION on from the Cold War, it is easy to forget how every aspect of our lives was shaped for half a century by the existential confrontation between the capitalist and socialist worlds.
Given that, it is imperative we do not allow the latest showdown between the “free” world and its adversaries today to obscure the real driving force of anti-communism after 1945: US imperialism.
That motive becomes emphatically clear when we consider alongside the usual suspects of Russia and China the “rogue” states that Washington and its satellites today continue to isolate, demonise or threaten: Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Palestine and so on.
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