MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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The Appalling Silence of Good People
by Merryn Williams
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
I’m haunted still by my cowardice, my silence
that long-lost morning when my fellow student,
flaunting a newspaper,
said loudly, in her clipped white-South African accent,
‘I think that girl should be shot through the head’.
I should have snapped back, ‘Helen, that’s disgusting!’
and, when she expressed incredulity, should have said,
‘I don’t want to listen to your sadistic fantasies.
I’m not shocked by that poor girl, I’m shocked by you’.
Would we have actually fought each other? Two
young women scuffling in that respectable common room?
I edged away from her, and no one was shot.
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