MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
Navigating the harrowing passage to freedom
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
The Mediterranean Wall
by Louis-Philippe Dalembert
Pushkin Press, £14.99
THE most harmful myth fuelled by right-wing politicians manufacturing a “hostile environment” to prevent refugees reaching our shores is that the majority are “economic migrants.”
The populist message is clear: the experiences of these people do not obey legal definitions of persecution in their own countries and so are merely chancers gaming a leaky international system and, thereby, undeserving of refugee status.
Yet the reality is so complex — and the personal stories of migrants so diverse— as to render largely pointless definitions extrapolated so cynically from international laws that went out of date long ago.
More from this author
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a strangely reassuring book, grounded in exploring our alienation and the creative possibilities inherent in embracing cognitive diversity
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends an exhibition on the profound and sometimes revelatory interactions between Islamic and Western art
Six years on from the Bangladeshi factory collapse, survivors help British activists launch a radical new brand that redefines ‘ethical fashion,’ writes GAVIN O’TOOLE
