SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
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Resistance is not futile
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz
The Star's critics BRETT GREGORY, JOHN GREEN, MICHAEL BONCZA and ANGUS REID review The Stimming Pool, Misericordia, La Cocina, Irena’s Vow, and The End
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
ANDREW HEDGECOCK relishes visual storytelling with no respect for genres, movements or styles
The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume III: A Novel
Peter Weiss, Duke University Press, £26.47
THE third volume of Peter Weiss’s masterwork The Aesthetics of Resistance opens with the narrator describing the murder of dozens of innocents by Nazi troops. In actuality, he is watching his mother lost in a hallucinatory vision brought on by the madness she and her husband have witnessed in their forced exile from their home in Bohemia.
It is not until near the novel’s end that we discover that not only did she witness such executions — soldiers lining up civilians in front of a ditch then shooting them from behind so they fall face first into their mass grave — but that she fell into such a pit alive, wrestling with the dying humans to get out after the shooting ended. It was this moment that her mind broke and began to withdraw from the deranged reality of the Nazi frenzy of murder and annihilation.
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While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
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