MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Revelatory account of the 'untouchables' experience in the making of India
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
Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
by Sujatha Gidla
(Daunt Books, £14.99)
SUJATHA GIDLA’S new book is not about the modern India of Bollywood, nuclear weapons and a thriving economy. Set at the end of British colonial rule it is the story of her family — “untouchables” who are part of the caste system which dictates their role in society and even where they live.
The title of the book sums up the “untouchable” experience as an ant among elephants, at the bottom of a system that is determined to squash you.
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