MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Domestic pyrotechnics
MATTHEW HAWKINS is drawn into the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India
heart
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Heart Lamp
Banu Mushtaq, And Other Stories, £14.99
IN Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, matters marinate or smoulder. Readers get to pore over paragraphs while issues ignite.
Amid her precise environments, and their host of vivid social-class enmity/familial powerplay, writer Banu Mushtaq delineates volatile occurrence with trustworthy control. Her succinct flair in sketching distinct three-dimensional allies and adversaries sets her arena for pivotal realisation and outcome. I’m put in mind of the sparking of domestic pyrotechnics, blue touchpaper and all.
In translation by Deepa Bashti, many choice Kannada words persist. These are never italicised. The beauty of this choice means not only that the music of given names; details and condition of dress; inventories of foods – and reference to who’s doing the cooking – each remain powerfully intact. Original words are also used where legal forces and devices of tradition come into play and this all feels right, in recognition of documentary authenticity and cultural nuance. English language readers will sense and respect complex entities (Sharia, for example) while protagonists — many of them adorable against the odds — maintain voices of credible immediacy.
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MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
MATTHEW HAWKINS admires a writer with the gumption and wit to extend a transformative experience of autism to the reader
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds two evocative new productions that have premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe before touring nationwide
