SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
STEFAN HEYM — journalist, novelist, essayist — and a lifelong socialist, died 20 years ago, aged 88, on December 16 2001. His unfading commitment to humanity through his writing and actions must be remembered and celebrated.
Born in 1913 into a prosperous Jewish family in the industrial east German town of Chemnitz, he was Helmut Flieg until he changed his name after fleeing to Czechoslovakia in March 1933, the youngest literary escapee from the newly installed Nazi regime. More than one change of country lay ahead for him.
The Flieg family’s textile business had no attraction for the growing Helmut. In September 1931, already anti-militarist, he produced a poem prompted by a newspaper report of German military officers being sent to China as instructors.
Hundreds in Berlin gathered on January 15 to honour the US-born socialist who made East Germany his home. Florentine Morales Sandoval reports
The decision highlights the tension between freedom of expression and the state’s role in shaping historical memory at former concentration camps, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia
JOHN ELLISON recalls the momentous role of the French resistance during WWII



