CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Rep, Birmingham/Touring
Khaled Hosseini’s evocative fiction is lost in translation to the stage
At the mercy of the plot: Sujaya Dasgupta, Pal Aron and Amina Zia
[Pamela Raith]
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
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
KHALED HOSSEINI’S 2007 bestselling novel is a powerful story that follows the fortunes of two indomitable Afghan women over three decades.
Forced together by circumstances, their increasingly dependent relationship, set against the harrowing disintegration of Kabul under Taliban rule, is suffused with the sense of daily Afghan life.
Unfortunately, this production sacrifices most of the texture and sensory elements of the novel for mere narrative. Traditional costumes, cursory dances, recorded Afghan music and patrolling Taliban militia are no replacement for how the book submerges the reader into another world.
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GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
SIMON PARSONS is beguiled by a dream-like exploration of the memories of a childhood in Hong Kong
