MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world
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Three fine novellas
MICHAEL BIRTWHISTLE relishes the riches, the politics and the poetry of a new volume of short fiction
‘BLOODY WEEK’: Revolutionaries of the Paris Commune summarily executed by the Versailles army in May 1871
[Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi /Public domain]
MARIA DUARTE, SCOTT ALSWORTH, ANDY HEDGECOCK and ANGUS REID review The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway, Time and Water, and Strictly Ballroom
STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards
New releases from Joe Wilkes, Honey and the Bear, and Hannah James and Toby Kuhn
Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album
Reviews of T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Tamikrest, and Dub Colossus
Rivers of the Unspoilt World
by David Constantine
Comma Press, £9.99
IN THIS new collection of short fiction, the acclaimed writer David Constantine takes his readers in each tale to a plethora of times, subjects and locations.
The first piece pulls no punches in its depiction of the week of the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune, the “semaine sanglante / bloody week” of May 1871.
A Polish historian, Dr Wiktoria, on study leave in Paris, is researching these momentous, barbaric events. Online, an academic fellow Pole, fervently Catholic, delivers a paper defending the ruthless repression of the Commune.
Depressed at such revisionism Wiktoria presents her own interpretations, but fears that she has failed to do justice to her and Marx’s cause.
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