CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
Bindlestiff
by Wayne Holloway
(Influx Press, £9.99)
THERE are occasions when a novel deserves the sobriquet mould-breaking and one such is the publication of this tale of an African-American hobo by Wayne Holloway, which switches back and forth between a present-day film script and a dystopian future reality.
Bindlestiff – another term for a travelling itinerant – starts in the harsh factory of Hollywood as a script writer and director try to secure the money and the team to make a film about a “black Charlie Chaplin.”
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint
The daughter of a legendary blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter has spoken out against the reactionary move, says MIKE SCHNEIDER
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage



