STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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A convoluted ‘shaggy dog story’
A book that will be relished by those who can’t wait for another socialist nightmare story, suggests JOHN GREEN
TORTURE BY POETRY’: GROMA Kolibri typewriter, Made in East Germany, c1956
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War
By Philip Oltermann
Faber & Faber £14.99
PHILIP OLTERMANN is the Guardian’s German correspondent and is clearly keen to jump aboard the gravy train of Stasi horror stories. In discussing this latest “Stasi revelation” book, it is difficult to know where to start in terms of trying to discover factual nuggets buried beneath the huge slagheap of fabulation.
In researching his book, Oltermann takes the easy seam, already well mined by his forerunners. He plunders the “Stasi Archives” to investigate the story behind a poetry circle set up by members of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security (MfS) or, in Western jargon, “the Stasi.”
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