GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
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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]
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
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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ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
CARL DEATH introduces a new book which explores how African science fiction is addressing climate change