ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
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THE BLOCKADE SWALLOW (Smokestack Books, £8.99) is a selection of poems by the Soviet writer Olga Berggolts (1910-75), whose daily broadcasts on Leningrad radio during the Nazi blockade of the city became a symbol of the city’s refusal to surrender:
“The hungry, cruel, and dark winter / forty-one to forty-two will never be forgotten, / nor the fierce artillery fire, / nor the horrors of the bombing in forty-three. / The ground beneath the city lies pierced and broken. / Not a single life, comrades, will be forgotten.”
The book covers the years from 1925-60, bearing eloquent witness to some of the most tragic events of the 20th century — from the NEP years and the Terror (when Berggolts was imprisoned for two years), through war and blockade, to the disappointment of the post-war years:
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SYLVIA HIKINS relishes Jeanette Winterson’s brilliant hijack of 1001 Nights to push aside the boundaries set by others
JAN WOLF enjoys a British revival of the 1972 come of age farce/panto Pippin