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SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
Virgin and Child by Maggie Hamand
Gripping novel of intersex Pope pregnant with transgressive tensions
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
MAGGIE HAMAND'S Virgin and Child describes a brutal war zone of shifting battle lines, a clash between theoretical theologising reflecting papal power and prerogative and the messy truths of personal experience.
In her novel, Pope Patrick is the first Irish-born incumbent of the Roman Catholic church. A pretty mainstream pontiff, he is nevertheless already raising the hackles of the hardcore reactionaries within the hierarchy.
His calling a conference to discuss the fate of the souls of foetuses that have been aborted and miscarried is a challenge too far for the senior cardinals circling him like vultures.
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