MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Navigating the harrowing passage to freedom
[Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe/CC]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
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so diverse— as to render largely pointless definitions extrapolated so cynically from international laws that went out of date long ago.
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KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
GAVIN O’TOOLE is enthralled by the colourful portrait of a woman who pioneered a path into the tough, magical world of journalism
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
A society that grows accustomed to ‘undesirable’ people also grows accustomed to undesirable deaths. Minneapolis serves as a wake-up call, including for our own refugee policies, writes MARC VANDEPITTE