MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
Compelling analysis of Islamophobia's ascendancy in France
Marine Le Pen's Front National at a rally in Paris in May 2012
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
JAN WOOLF is bowled over by a major retrospective for the YBA artist
LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
KATHRYN JOHNSON recommends the work of Norman Kaplan that was a tool in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination
Republic of Islamophobia: The Rise of Respectable Racism in France
Jim Wolfreys
(Hurst, £14.99)
WHEN the government of a country, with the support of much of its populace, bans Muslim women from covering their face in public and prohibits Muslim children from wearing headscarves in schools, it’s hard to ascribe the phenomenon to anything other than Islamophobia.
Thus Jim Wolfreys’s book wastes little time on trying to build a case that widespread anti-Muslim feeling actually exists in France, although he does quickly assemble the evidence. Instead, he concentrates on looking for the reasons behind such a phenomenon.
Similar stories
PETER MASON is beguiled by a fascinating account of the importance of cricket to immigrants from the Caribbean to the UK
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF