SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
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Where Gaza came from
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
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
Late Ottoman Gaza: An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation
Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Buessow, Cambridge University Press, £85
YUVAL BEN-BASSAT and Johann Buessow are the sort of historians who like digging through archives for granular detail. Ben-Bassat’s previous work includes a study on petitions sent from Palestine to the Ottoman sultan at the end of the 19th century. Buessow’s CV includes the work Egyptian Rule in Syria through the Eyes of An Anonymous Damascene Chronicler 1831-1840.
This book is equally specific, delimited and detailed. This is not a history of heroes, this is what you can learn from, say, the 1905 Ottoman census in Palestine.
The manuscript was finished shortly before October 2023; the authors considered, and then rejected, updating it in the light of events since then which have plunged Gaza into the abyss. The tone is studiously academic and politically neutral, telling you what the evidence says and implies, and framing it within their particular expertise.
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