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
KNOWN to millions, even those who have never read Daniel Defoe’s popular desert-island story, Robinson Crusoe has never failed to engage the interests of not only enthusiasts for tales of adventure but also literary critics, sociologists, economists and psychologists.
Widely recognised as the first modern novel, Defoe’s work has been claimed as “a core mythic text of Western and capitalist civilisation over the last three centuries,” with Marx criticising classical bourgeois economists who seized upon the enterprising marooned Crusoe, reduced to the state of natural man, as a model for a perfect market economy.
HENRY BELL follows the lineage of revolutions, from the English to the Chinese, and asks where revolutionary politics exists today
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today


