Tag: politics

It began appallingly – with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia – but the reforming hope that rose, phoenix-like, from those awful flames was spectacular; the Jasmine Revolution overtook Tunisia and flowered into the Arab Spring, Wall Street was occupied, the 1% gathered on the steps of St Paul’s, Francois Hessel published Indignez-vous! Lu […]
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Resist: Stories of Uprising

Assessing this hyper-current and innovative format of fiction based on real events, with historians’ input, from Comma Press, Jemma L King admires the urgency of forty diverse voices writing about when the state and the individual collide

PUBLISHED ON: 29/01/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Resist: Stories of Uprising charts the milestone moments of defiance in British history – from quiet personal stands to frenzied and uncontrollable ex …

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Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks

Georgia Fearn is captivated by a dark collection, about the mother-daughter relationship, that makes you grieve for something you did not know you had lost

PUBLISHED ON: 29/01/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Kittie Belltree’s words, ‘so deep, so dark and dislocating, in the first poem of this collection, are no exaggeration. Reading it in one sitting evoke …

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The BBC National Short Story Award 2019 anthology

Dafydd Harvey reviews an anthology of the shortlist for this prize, now in its fourteenth year and presenting the work of five women; the winner of this £15,000 prize was Wales’ Jo Lloyd

PUBLISHED ON: 29/10/19

CATEGORY: Reviews

‘The Children’ by Lucy Caldwell First, in order of appearance, is Caldwell’s The Children which centres on a writer’s research for a story about Carol …

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A Little Gay History of Wales

Chris Moss admires this book, which sold out within weeks of its publication last month, as a call to arms for gay lives in Wales to forge their distinctive part in our national story

PUBLISHED ON: 29/10/19

CATEGORY: Reviews

Matt Lucas’ refrain in Little Britain, ‘the only gay in the village’, like so much else in that comedy series, played on presumed UK-wide prejudices – …

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Calling a Manual Earth-lifting Device a Spade

Nigel Jarrett

PUBLISHED ON: 26/06/19

CATEGORY: Opinion

Writers who are prepared to be pushed around don’t deserve the name. If they wish to support the Communists on Monday, the Tories on Wednesday, and th …

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Zero Hours on the Boulevard: Tales of Independence and Belonging

Alex Diggins find that this short-story collection is razor-edged in its timeliness; but can literature heal the wounds of Brexit?

PUBLISHED ON: 26/02/19

CATEGORY: Reviews

A couple argue over whether to take in the stranger scratching at the door. A lonely young man, employed by a euthanasia clinic, resolves to take his …

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The Tyranny of Lost Things

Eleanor Howe

PUBLISHED ON: 30/10/18

CATEGORY: Reviews

Sepia-toned Instagram feeds, vinyl collections, Polaroid cameras. These are the nostalgic trappings of so-called ‘millennials’, a generation obsessed …

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Hometown Tales: Wales

Suzy Ceulan Hughes is charmed by two single stories about home, displacement and identity confusion

PUBLISHED ON: 30/10/18

CATEGORY: Reviews

Hometown Tales, Wales is the latest in Weidenfeld & Nicolson’s ‘Original Tales by Regional [sic] Writers’ series, which pairs ‘exciting new voices …

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Feral

Resistance to labelling people is at the heart of this poetry collection on a superficially topical theme, Garry MacKenzie finds, but it also moves into a world which feels like a selkie’s take on a story by Ovid

PUBLISHED ON: 30/10/18

CATEGORY: Reviews

‘Feral’ is a word on the rise. More than old saws like ‘back to nature’, it speaks to contemporary environmental concerns, from the desire to rewild t …

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