MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Quality left-wing fiction makes its mark
This has been a rich year for left-wing fiction, both realist and surrealist.
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Two of the most outstanding novels over the past 12 months were set in the Americas but were far apart both in location and period.
John Wight's Dreams that Die is a sharp-toothed and candid account of the author's ultimately failed attempt to make it big in Hollywood as a screenwriter, which documents his and other film workers' struggles to get by on the extras circuit.
But Wight's dying film career memorably contrasts with his growing political awakening and involvement in the anti-war movement in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer