DAVID RENTON is puzzled by an ambitious attempt to look back on world culture from the future without engaging with or understanding it
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Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell
Wide-ranging account of the movement which changed the course of China's history
Widespread: A Maoist settlement in Nepal
[Pavel Novak/Creative Commons] 
MICHAEL STEWART applauds a fun send-up of the substandard Agatha Christie whodunnit
LEO BOIX reviews a novella by Brazilian Ana Paula Maia, and poetry by Peruvian Giancarlo Huapaya, and Chilean Elvira Hernandez
BRENT CUTLER unpicks the cryptic clues of a book within a book within a murder mystery
Reviews of the Neil Charles Quartet, the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, and the Olie Brice Quartet
GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
MAOISM is broadly defined as a variant of Marxism that places greater emphasis on the peasantry and, while “orthodox” Marxist-Leninists see this group as equal to the industrial working class, with its specific emphasis on anti-imperialism, Maoism can be dismissive of workers’ movements in the developed world.
It contains a cult-like veneration of the leader which puts the Soviet Union under Stalin to shame, although that’s possibly been recently exceeded in North Korea.
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BRENT CUTLER unpicks the cryptic clues of a book within a book within a murder mystery
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