MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Failure to reconcile faith and reason at an individual or aggregate level
An absorbing metaphor for contemporary Western societies is recommended by PAUL SIMON
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
The Kindly Ones
by Cliff James
Lethe Press £10.55
ALTHOUGH framed within the dystopian fictional tradition, The Kindly Ones is, in many ways, an analysis of contemporary US and indeed Western societies.
Set in an economically and environmentally devastated part of North America, Cliff James’s minutely observed second novel plots the trajectories of two very distinct groups of internal refugees.
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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
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL