Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
Letters from Latin America with Leo Boix: April 7, 2025
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
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PAUL FOLEY is disappointed by a production that encourages the audience to laugh at rather than with the characters
Odysseus’s homecoming myth is treated as a factual story, with strong resonances for our contemporary world. This is an implicit anti-war film that has an urgent relevance, writes JOHN GREEN
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
PATAGONIA, a vast region located at the southern extremity of South America, presents an array of otherworldly landscapes, encompassing the Andes mountain range, crystalline lakes and fjords, temperate forests, glaciers, and boundless deserts and steppes.
Maria Sonia Cristoff’s work, False Calm (Daunt Books, £10.99), seeks to challenge the idyllic perception of Patagonia by recounting the stories of several ghost towns that were negatively affected by the decline of the oil boom.
This non-fiction book serves as both a travelogue and a personal essay, guiding the author to the peripheries of Patagonia. It may resonate with admirers of Bruce Chatwin, Susan Sontag, or WG Sebald, as each of the 10 essays intricately intertwines the stories of individuals and communities abandoned by the hydrocarbon industry, enriched with anecdotes, vignettes, and ethereal descriptions expertly translated by Katherine Silver.
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A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
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Femicide and the search for justice in Mexico: a book by Cristina Rivera Garza; and a travel book through Latin America by Welsh poet Richard Gwyn