MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
Hardly civilised
ALEX HALL asks whether ‘western civilisation’ is simply a disruptive polarisation in what was historically a diverse and interconnected world
BARBARITY: Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Monday, May 27, 2024. Palestinian health workers said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 people in the area. US weapons are alleged to have been used in the assault.
[Jehad Alshrafi/AP]
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
How The World Made The West
Josephine Quinn, Bloomsbury, £30
WHEN Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he replied he thought it might be a good idea. Josephine Quinn, in her survey of 4,000 years of history, implies Gandhi might have been being quite generous.
Western civilisation doesn’t have much definitively Western in it, and it’s wrong to think in terms of a civilisation. There aren’t really “peoples,” there are people who travelled, learned, borrowed, and adapted. And often “civilisation” doesn’t quite stand up its reputation.
“Western civilisation” sees itself as the direct inheritance of ancient Greece and Rome. Democracy, liberty, philosophy, theatre and concrete are bequeathed to the West, from the ancients, via the Renaissance.
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Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old