CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Red Hands by Colin Sargent
Love, loss and rueful laughter in Ceauscescu-era Romania
Iordana Ceauscescu
[Barbican Press]
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
HAZ de necaz. The term – Romanian for rueful laughter – fittingly appears a number of times in this novel. It pretty much describes Red Hands’ tone – tragedy hardened further by comedy.
After his extraordinary second novel The Boston Castrato, Colin Sargent shifts his intelligent and sharp focus from the US of the 1920s to the Romania of the 1960s onwards.
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