ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Lenin the mechanic to Zizek’s oily rag
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through
by VI Lenin, edited and introduced by Slavoj Zizek
(Verso, £12.99)
LIKE a football match, this is a book of two halves. In the first, Slavoj Zizek dribbles around ponderously and aimlessly, with trademark labyrinthine arguments and cross-reference overload — “[To] put it in Deleuzian terms,” “in the Kantian sense,” the “Lacanian ‘master-signifier,’” yadda, yadda, yadda.
In the second half, mercifully, there's a game-changing substitution. Zizek takes himself off and brings on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who instantly assumes leadership.
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