MEATY ROLES: Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr in The Sympathizer
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MATTHEW HAWKINS relishes the valiant defiance of two gay Scottish painters whose example resists both collectors’ taste and historical fiction
Essays on contemporary Latin American feminism, a poetry debut by a queer Texan of Mexican heritage, and a lush volume of tango and milonga drawings
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
HBO’s The Sympathiser from the Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen opens with a quote: “All wars are fought twice, once on the battlefield and the second time in memory.”
It’s not simply memory that the book and the series are concerned with though; it’s “representation,” that is social memory refracted through in this case a hostile media which often exists to “correct” the sins and failures of bloody imperial overreach.
“On the battlefield,” Vietnam was lost by the US and its tiny number of — by the conclusion of the war — collaborators, although the cost was high with over one million Vietnamese killed for the crime of wanting to free their country from first French and then US domination.
KYRIL WHITTAKER looks at what guides Vietnam 50 years after reunification
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
