MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
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A portrait of the revolutionary as a young man
RON JACOBS recommends an evocative novel that explores the time that Ho Chi Minh spent in Paris
A TELLING REPOSTE: ‘Macron, life is not an Excel spreadsheet,’ Yellow Vests demo in Paris on March 16, 2019
[Thomon/CC] ![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
Faraway the Southern Sky: A Novel
Joseph Andras, Verso, £9.99
IN 1968, as war raged across Vietnam, the Vietnamese revolutionary popularly known as Ho Chi Minh wrote a new year’s message to the worldwide movement against the US war on the Vietnamese.
After somewhat poetically listing the ongoing war crimes of the US military, the letter ended with these words: “We enjoy the support of brothers and friends in the five continents. We shall win and so will you. Thank you for your support for the Vietnamese people.”
I wouldn’t read these words until the fall of that year; my anti-war consciousness was just taking shape. I was 13. I recall that, when I did read them that first time, it was like a light bulb going off. I could no longer consider any Vietnamese as an enemy. To do so would require demonising them — something I could no longer do after reading this simple and honest letter.
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