DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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2020: Books of the Year with Fiona O’Connor
INSPIRED OBSERVATION: Fintan O'Toole
[RCW Literary Agency]
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
IN THEORY, 2020’s lockdown should have provided the perfect conditions for major outbreaks of bibliophilia.
But, following an intense publishing year in 2019, when The Washington Post book section declared that “fascism is back in fashion” and classics like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Sinclair Lewis’s It Could Happen Here shot up bestseller lists, 2020 ironically seemed less fevered — the rise of Covid-19 and the US presidential election shifted the ground beneath publishing’s feet somewhat.
Faced with a worldwide assault on democracy, with authoritarian populism gaining traction in countries including Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil and, of course, the US and Britain, many writers seemed to have entered the depressive stage of the grief cycle.
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