NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the return of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music to the repertoire of this years’ Three Choirs Festival
A lifetime’s achievement
GABRIEL ROCKHILL recommends a perfect primer on contemporary China
A Fuxing high-speed train running near the Beijing Central Business District
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LEO BOIX reviews a caustic novel of resistance and womanhood by Buenos Aires-born Lucia Lijtmaer, and an electrifying poetry collection by Chilean Vicente Huidobro
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red
Edited by Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, Praxis Press, £25
PEOPLE’S CHINA AT 75 provides a rigorous materialist analysis and a coherent theoretical framing of the PRC’s place in the world today.
Comprised of 11 incisive analyses framed by a capacious introduction, the book serves as a useful guide to anyone interested in a crash course on China by some of the world’s leading experts on the question. Given its readability, with concise essays and a total length of just under 150 pages, it is particularly well suited for full-time organisers and a broad readership outside of academic circles.
Since it covers so much terrain and tackles many pressing questions head on, it is in many ways a perfect primer on China. At the same time, it is packed with empirical details, extensive references, and insightful analyses that will be of interest to those with a strong working knowledge of the PRC.
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