DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
Latest editorial
Science Fiction with MAT COWARD: December 11, 2022
New titles from Daniel Godfrey, Nathan Tavares, Benjamin Greenaway, Stephen Oram, and Laura Kat Young
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
IN 1962, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, a prison in Nottinghamshire awakes to the most terrifying news possible: the nuclear war has started, and the missiles are already landing.
However, in The Calculations Of Rational Men by Daniel Godfrey (published by the author, £11.99), this facility has been built with its own fallout shelter. Why the government would make a point of saving these particular people’s lives, none of them can imagine, but at least it means they’ve got a chance.
They just have to survive on tiny rations for a few weeks until radioactivity drops to a safe level. Help will come. But then, one of the biggest snowfalls of the century begins …
Similar stories
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
Looking for moral co-ordinates after a tough year for rational political thinking and shared human morality
Timeloop murder, trad family MomBomb, Sicilian crime pages and Craven praise
A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream