The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
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Shine on Silver Moon
JAMIE BRITTON is spurred by the memoir of a feminist bookshop to remember streets once filled with radical literature and activism
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
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
A Bookshop of One’s Own
Jane Cholmeley, Mudlark, £16.99
CHARING CROSS ROAD in London has changed. Back in the 1980s I had made the foolhardy decision to move to London. Foolhardy in that I was in my twenties and had no idea of “city life” and secondly, I had no work to go to. So I ended up working at Foyles bookshop.
I hated it.
During my lunch break (I had to “clock off”) I would walk miserably down Charing Cross Road dreaming of all those other bookshops that so nicer to work for. Film, crime, art, second hand; this was a place of wonder for a bibliophile. And then I would end up at 68 Silver Moon, whose window displays were always eye-catching, at times humorous, but always welcoming.
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