SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
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FIONA O’CONNOR assesses a dense and overpopulated novel that isn’t satire and doesn’t go deep
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz
The Star's critics BRETT GREGORY, JOHN GREEN, MICHAEL BONCZA and ANGUS REID review The Stimming Pool, Misericordia, La Cocina, Irena’s Vow, and The End
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
Caledonian Road
Andrew O’Hagan
Faber, £20
FREDERIC JAMESON used the term “national allegory” for the view that literature is really an attempt to discover a country’s identity, and therefore its inhabitants.
In Caledonian Road, big thumper of a novel at over 600 pages, Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan offers a post-Brexit, liberalist mea culpa of sorts, repositioning Britain in its isolated decline.
O’Hagan’s focus is a London “levitating on a sea of dirty money,” as Sergei Magnitsky put it. Emerging from the pandemic in 2020, the masks are coming off and there’s profit to be extracted.
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While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
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