JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
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Here’s looking at you, kid
DEBRA BENITA SHAW applauds the Booker prize winner: a short but powerful story urging us to save the planet
First gathering of two Chinese astronaut crews (Shenzhou 14 and 15) on Tiangong on November 30, 2022
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
MATTHEW HAWKINS surveys the upcoming programme of contemporary dance in Glasgow, and picks some highlights
‘Chance encounters are what keep us going,’ says novelist Haruki Murakami. In Amy, a chance encounter gives fresh perspective to memories of angst, hedonism and a charismatic teenage rebel.
Orbital
Samantha Harvey, Vintage, £9.99
SAMANTHA HARVEY’S Orbital has won the 2024 Booker prize. What it so skilfully and ambitiously exposes is the human cost of space flight set against the urgency of the climate crisis.
While a typhoon of life-threatening proportions gathers across south-east Asia, six astronauts and cosmonauts hurtle around Earth on the International Space Station. Their everyday routine of tasteless food and laboratory work is in stark contrast to the awesome spectacle of the blue planet, oscillating between night and day, dark and light, where international borders are meaningless.
On the International Space Station, borders are only visible on the side of the Earth that is under night and only really as clusters of artificial light which shows cities. Rivers are “nonsensical scorings … like strands of long fallen hair” and “the other side of the world will arrive in 40 minutes” blurring it all.
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