MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
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Wisdom born from bitter experience of conflicts ancient and modern
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
“NOT the five Books of Moses./Not the five wounds of Christ./Not the five pillars of Islam. These don’t cause me sleepless nights./No, I lie awake thinking/how a widow with five/mouths to feed will survive/on only stones for bread.”
Those lines are from Playing the Ghost of Maimonides (Bloodaxe, £9.95), Guyanese poet John Agard’s most ambitious book yet and a wholly original take on the endless wars of the 21st century.
Maimonides was a 12th-century Spanish-born rabbi who argued for the indivisibility of God and the unity of all religious faiths. Influential in Jewish, Muslim and Christian philosophy, he once wrote a “guide for the perplexed” in Judeo-Arabic.
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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
by Marjorie Lotfi