The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
The paradox of futurist dystopias
SHEILA FITZPATRICK acknowledges the paradox that the Western vision of the Soviet Union was forged by writers who had no experience of it
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
THIS year is the centenary of Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We — a major influence on George Orwell’s dystopia 1984, as well as an important early contribution to the burgeoning genre of science fiction.
We and 1984 (published in 1949) were crucial influences on cold war Western imagination of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state. But Orwell had never been there, and Zamyatin wrote his dystopia in 1920, a time of chaos and civil war just three years after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and two years before the Soviet Union formally came into being.
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