MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
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Lumumba’s right hand woman
ROGER MCKENZIE recommends an insider's view of the fight for African independence, as experienced by an important and neglected woman
Andree Blouin, centre, Patrice Lumumba’s adviser and speechwriter, an image used for the film Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat
[Modern Films/IMDb] ![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria
Andree Blouin, Verso, £18.99
THERE is much to unpick from the title alone of My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria.
The reference to Africa as a country describes the pan-Africanist philosophy of Andree Blouin, a mixed heritage woman born in the Central African Republic. It is important to understand that Blouin’s support for pan-Africanism — as she appears to interpret it, as a United States of Africa — does not mean she was a socialist. She was not.
Blouin makes it clear in this important book that her priority was fighting for the liberation of the African continent from colonial domination.
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