SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
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‘I think therefore I am not’
FIONA O’CONNOR recommends a biography of a Portuguese modernist poet who maintained a philosophical approach to his own being and is best encountered within the playfulness of his writing
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
Critical Lives: Fernando Pessoa
by Bartholomew Ryan
Reaktion Books £12.99
FERNANDO PESSOA, Portuguese poet of the enigmatic self, is the latest focus of the Critical Lives series from Reaktion Books; a series of short critical biographies that presents the work of important cultural figures in the context of their lives.
Despite living in relative obscurity, Pessoa is now an increasingly recognised figure of modernist literature. This book, written by a Lisbon-based university philosopher, attempts to locate Pessoa within the ideas and events, influences and shifting politics of his age.
To capture Pessoa is challenging: “I think therefore I am not” — Pessoa’s flipping of Descartes’ famous saying characterises much of his writing. He is a self-proclaimed empty vessel, a thing of shreds and patches, fragmentary writings, abandoned projects, works unrealised.
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