RON JACOBS applauds a reading of black history in the US that plots the path from autonomy to self-governance and then liberation
Letters From Latin America
Reviews of poetry and fiction by Chilean authors Ariel Dorfman, Paulina Flores, Eduardo Embry and Winett de Rokha
REVERED FIGURE: Winett de Rokha
TOM KING relishes an enlightening history of the checkered progress of the war that humanity has waged on bacteria
ANDY HEDGECOCK is intrigued by a scholarly account of how systemic disinformation can exacerbate the perception of threat and foster hatred
New releases from Cuban pianist Aruan Ortiz, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, and London pianist Geoff Castle
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
WILL STONE applauds a comprehensive survey of love in its many moods and musical forms
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists, was kept in captivity between 1575 and 1580 in the city of Algiers, then one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman empire.
After his return to Spain, he briefly worked in Andalusia as a purchasing agent for the Spanish navy. This led to his imprisonment for a few months in Seville after a banker with whom he had deposited Crown funds went bankrupt.
It was during his brief stay at a jail in Seville that Cervantes started his masterpiece Don Quixote, a picaresque narrative that would become a founding work of Western literature — it’s often labelled the first modern novel.
More from this author
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
LEO BOIX reviews a novella by Brazilian Ana Paula Maia, and poetry by Peruvian Giancarlo Huapaya, and Chilean Elvira Hernandez
LEO BOIX reviews a caustic novel of resistance and womanhood by Buenos Aires-born Lucia Lijtmaer, and an electrifying poetry collection by Chilean Vicente Huidobro
LEO BOIX salutes the revelation that British art has always had a queer pulse, long before the term became cultural currency
