In 2016, Tilted Axis Press published an English translation of Hwang Jungeun’s novel, One Hundred Shadows. It was a perfect example of what can be done within the confines of a short novel: it told an atmospheric story of two people living impoverished lives on the fringes of society, laced with a potent dose of the uncanny. It portrayed the frustrations of life in a region that might be developed out of existence at any moment, and was charged with the potential of human connection and joy... [read more]
Bhaskar Sunkara, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
reviewed by Neil Dawson
In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels confidently declared that capitalism’s demise and the proletariat’s victory were ‘equally inevitable’. Only the most Panglossian radical socialist would make this claim today. The recent record of capitalism in countries such as America and Britain may be marked by extreme inequality, financial crisis, and popular discontent, but that doesn’t mean we’re on route to somewhere better. This is the writer and activist Bhaskar... [read more]
On a grey day in Edinburgh at the tail-end of the nineteenth century, a young Scotchman – full of talent and promise – looks out through his shop window and sees little to stir the spirit. The heavy rain has turned the sooty buildings near black, and the sky hangs crushingly low. He optimistically polishes and replaces his glasses, taking a second look. The scene remains bleak.
The young man is Brodie Moncur, a piano tuner for an Edinburgh piano maker, and he is at the beginning of an... [read more]
Sophie Robinson’s Rabbit is like hearing your neighbour cry through the walls. It’s distressing to hear, you feel like a voyeur, and you can’t help, because going round there would be another violation. But what if the neighbour was really playing a recording of that crying through your wall? That’s what the book is about. Over-egged, paratactic, coy about its own artifice, yet keen to explore the limits of personal fragility, Rabbit whips us through snatches of animal abuse, internet... [read more]
It's often claimed that the only people who recognise a real difference between science fiction and literary fiction are those who only read the latter. I'm inclined to argue the opposite. I came of age in an era when science fiction was well-regarded, its authors were published by Penguin Modern Classics, and sci-fi was 'acceptable reading' for someone with an interest in books. But it became clear to me as soon as I started reading science fiction that you could not be a fan of the genre... [read more]
Mary Beard’s Women and Power: A Manifesto is an accessible, poignant and convincing call to arms. It investigates historical precedent for silencing and disempowering women, considers women’s own testimonies and looks at where we are today in the fight for gender equality. Building on two lectures for the London Review of Books, one from 2014, the other 2017, Beard deftly moves between ancient tropes and contemporary events to assess ways in which women’s voices have, and continue to be,... [read more]
Hannah Sullivan’s Three Poems is one of the best volumes of 21st-century poetry I’ve read. I consider it something of a set of axioms that the best formal poetry is also always free, that the best free verse is also always formal, and that ultimately form and freedom are more synonymous than they are antithetical. In this regard, reading Three Poems was like encountering a demonstration of a proof.
In a similar vein, advancing a tradition often entails taking pains to interrogate and... [read more]
Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: the 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
reviewed by William Eichler
In 2004, at the height of the War on Terror, President George W. Bush gave a speech at a NATO conference in Istanbul praising the Turkish government. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), he insisted, demonstrated that Islam and liberal democracy were compatible and provided an example for a benighted Muslim world to emulate. ‘Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as a model to others,’ he told the gathered dignitaries.
Today, the ‘Turkish... [read more]
Rodrigo Fuentes, trans. Ellen Jones, Trout, Belly Up
reviewed by Jessie Spivey
The short story suffers the reputation of lightness. Readers often view them as writer’s way of cutting their teeth, or else as an easy introduction to their larger body of work; the less assiduous treat them like a pick n’ mix, praising and cherishing some stories and overlooking others. Trout, Belly Up, by Guatemalan author Rodrigo Fuentes, is a poor candidate for such lackadaisical approaches. Shortlisted for the 2018 Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez Short Story prize – the most important... [read more]
Photography is a recurring source of anxiety in Abigail Parry’s debut collection. Throughout, it is configured as a life-taking or violent act (it is, after all, an activity betrayed by the words we use for it: we take or capture pictures; we shoot our subjects), and it occasions an Angela Carter-like bloody chamber, in the form of a darkroom. Entitled ‘Red-rooms’, the grisly contents of the darkroom are the expected ‘exes, dressed in lace’ of the Bluebeard story, but also the moniker... [read more]
