Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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Extended trot
STEVEN ANDREW recommends an informed and personable work that contains as many ommisions as it does analyses
NO MINCING WORDS: Anti-Nato graffiti on a wall during the bombing of Novi Sad in 1999. Total civilian casualties of Nato bombings of Yugoslavia are estimated at probably 2,000 killed and about 6,000 wounded
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
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
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
You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024
Tariq Ali, Verso, £35
HAVING thoroughly enjoyed Tariq Ali’s earlier autobiographical book, Street Fighting Years, and having more than appreciated many other works such as his widely read and timely The Clash Of Fundamentalisms, it’s nice to report that this latest momentous tome was in no way a disappointment.
That said, it’s very different from Ali’s earlier life story in that it is a huge, unwieldy and somewhat chaotic collection. It is fair to say that Ali is not without a shortage of interests — or a shortage of words for that matter — and I won’t even attempt to list the number of subjects covered in an account by no means chronological and seamless in treatment.
Ali’s movement away from more overtly ideological forms of Trotskyism is documented by notes on internal struggles within the International Marxist Group which he left to join a leftwards-shifting Bennite Labour Party, and by his relationship with key international figures such as Ernest Mandel.
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