ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
All the horrors of Iraq
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
A civilian casualty of war in Iraq lost both legs
[Public Domain]
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
Sololand
By Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright
Comma Press £10.99
SOLOLAND by Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim is a collection of three stories focusing on Iraq’s recent violent history and its devastating consequences.
One of the most established contemporary Arabic writers being published in English, Blasim represents the starkest brutalities through satire and black humour. His long-time collaborator Jonathan Wright delivers the narratives into English idiomatic style.
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BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
LEO BOIX reviews two powerful Latin American novels in which myth and crime fiction expose the deadly consequences of patriarchy, clandestine abortion and state violence
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity