ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Refuge for the soul
MICHAL BONCZA recommends an exquisitely illustrated publication which charts the origins, rise and fall of the seminal Russian dacha
Arkhangelsk dachas panorama
[Fyodor Savintsev]
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Dacha
by Anna Benn (words) and Fyodor Savintsev (photos)
Fuel £26.95
DACHAS are as much a state of mind as they are actual physical constructs.
They are a timeless cultural identity that evolved from an imperial legacy of recognition for services rendered — instead of an OBE you got a dacha — to what became an attainable, classless aspiration of city dwellers in the aftermath of the October Revolution.
Their association with the need for a retreat that offered physical and spiritual solace is, perhaps, best defined by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment: “It was terribly hot outside, stuffy and crowded; everywhere there was whitewash, scaffolding, brick, dust and that certain summer stench so well known to every Petersburger who doesn’t have the means to rent a dacha.”
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