ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
Latest editorial
Tested by legacies of colonialism and apartheid
STEVE ANDREW recommends a comprehensive and revealing narrative about the most significant communist party in Africa
CPSA leadership meets in Cape Town in 1930. (L to R) bottom row: Bill Andrews, WH Harrison, Sidney Bunting. Johnny Gomas holds Lenin portrait. Second row: Gana Makabeni (above Harrison), Rebecca Bunting (third row fourth from right), Douglas Wolton (top row fourth from right)
[CPSA]
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021
by Tom Lodge
James Currey £70
BUILDING on earlier seminal texts such as RE Simons’s voluminous Class and Colour in South Africa and Michael Harmel’s more celebratory account Fifty Fighting Years, Tom Lodge’s latest work is a monumental, fascinating and painstakingly researched book that provides by far the most up-to-date and comprehensive history of the South African Communist Party.
Unlike liberal and Trotskyist commentators, Lodge also emerges as a critical but undoubtedly sympathetic observer who skilfully captures a dramatic and compelling story that has film-like qualities.
Lodge kicks off his book by demonstrating how the organised left in South Africa can effectively date its history back to the 1890s, a period in which a myriad of socialist, anarchist and syndicalist organisations began to be formed.
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