MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
An illuminating testimony by a wife and comrade
Biographies have been degraded by two opposing tendencies — hagiography or character destruction. This one has restored PAUL SIMON’S trust in the genre
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
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
Reminiscences of Lenin
by Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya
(Haymarket Books £16.80)
Quite rightly, the biographical genre has been treated with suspicion on the left. In principle, the focus on one “great” life or another usually exaggerates the accomplishments of the individual above those of the collective and the underlying economic and social forces.
In practice, the genre has been continuously degraded by two opposing tendencies — hagiography or character destruction.
Yet this welcome reprint of Nadezhda Krupskaya’s Reminiscences of Lenin sees the raw material of biography put to its proper socialist use as explanation for past class struggles and as guidance for future revolutionaries.
More from this author
An absorbing metaphor for contemporary Western societies is recommended by PAUL SIMON
PAUL SIMON falls under the spell of little known authors from an island at the edge of the world
