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GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
Yannis Ritsos: a true poet of his time
Poetry with Andy Croft
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
ANDY HEDGECOCK is charmed by a skilful adaptation of Tove Jansson’s lyrical portrait of three generations of a family, overcoming grief
ALEX HALL treads warily through a messy, dialectical struggle fought in the mundane machinery of driving licences, criminal law, and birth registries
MICHAL BONCZA, FIONA O’CONNOR, JAMES WALSH and ANGUS REID review Atlas of Disappearance, Love Me Tender, Bouchra, and This Tempting Madness
Flitting between myth and the modern world, Medusa is determined to steer clear of human affairs. When her resolve crumbles, the result is petrifying in every sense
The Greek communist poet Yiannis Ritsos (1909-1990) was one of the greatest European poets of the 20th century. He wrote more than 100 books — poems, plays, fiction, translations and essays. His work has been translated into over 40 different languages.
He won the Lenin Peace Prize and was nominated nine times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pablo Picasso drew his picture. Louis Aragon called Ritsos “the greatest poet of our age.”
Twenty-five years after his death, Ritsos’s poetry remains largely unavailable in Britain. Following the publication earlier this year of Romiosini, a book-length poem about the Greek communist partisans in the second world war, Smokestack Books has now published another epic poem by Ritsos, Epitaphios (£8.95).
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