Tag: Politics

Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus opens with a bang, in the dressing room of Fevvers, an aerial Helen of Troy billed as “The Cockney Venus” who performs in a London circus show. She is loud, bold, sure of herself, and she is speaking to a young journalist about her legendary life. I liked her instantly for her raucous good humour and fondness for spinning a tale.

Nights at the Circus preceded Angela Carter’s last novel, Wise Children. I haven’t read it, but I have seen a theatrical adaptation of it by the theatre company that takes its name from the book. I got a similar feeling from Fevvers as that which emanated from the actors on the stage during Wise Children – the pure joy of being a performer.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 5

Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark

Passionate Nomad recounts the life of Freya Stark, a British-Italian explorer who travelled extensively in the Middle East and Afghanistan (better described by people from the region as West Asia, which is what I’m going to call it) from 1927 until 1968. Her wanderlust took root during the First World War, when she served with a British Red Cross ambulance unit in Italy, but it was the restrictions of her sister’s life and the overbearing nature of her mother that encouraged her to make the most of her own life and take a boat from Italy to Beirut in November 1927. She wrote extensively about this and all the journeys around Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen that she made subsequently. Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s biography of this remarkable woman explores the adventure Stark’s life became.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 7

Shalash the Iraqi

Between October 2005 and November 2006, an anonymous writer posted stories to a website under the pseudonym Shalash the Iraqi. These stories documented the election process that, under the new Iraqi constitution, would replace the interim government installed in the aftermath of the second US invasion of Iraq and the end of Saddam Hussein’s control over the country. The stories were born from shock. They attempted to satirise the situation. They became an immediate hit locally, but the author remains anonymous because they also placed his life in danger.

In the introduction to this novel carved from the online stories, Kanan Makiya explains what kind of person Shalash is and what significance his stories held for the people in his community. He references the anarchy that followed the toppling of Saddam, the splintering of communities, the “total rupture with their past”.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 2

Looking for Luddites

Looking for Luddites grew out of author and illustrator John Hewitt’s student interest in the Pennine landscape in the 1970s. It gathers together fourteen sites associated with the Luddite uprisings in 1812, drawn by John in their 21st century contexts and presented with a brief history of their significance.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 11

The Service

Frankie Miren’s novel The Service follows three women involved in the sex industry in different ways. Lori is an illegal sex worker trying to forge a better life for herself and her daughter. Freya works as an escort to supplement her student loan. Paula is a journalist involved in a campaign to ban sex dolls.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 1

Phenotypes

An academic walks into a room. He is faced by eight other people. He’s a late arrival, the meeting is almost over. A government official introduces him badly, getting his name wrong, misrepresenting his work and generally not having done his research properly. It’s an inauspicious start to his involvement in a government commission into why a recent policy decision, to implement racial quotas for students in Brazil, has caused such chaos. Federico is the last person to have been nominated to the commission by the new President of the Republic of Brazil.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 1

1983

1983. The year of breakfast telly, the afternoon kids’ tv slot being rebranded Children’s ITV, Thatcher’s Tories winning a second general election by a landslide, the Little Miss books, compulsory seatbelt wearing, the pound coin and numerous other things. It’s also the setting for Tom Cox‘s new novel about a year in the life of Nottinghamshire schoolboy Benji Moss, who at the start is 7-going-on-8.

Things start off pretty normal. Benji rides his bike within the mile radius of his home that he is permitted, builds a shelter for the upcoming nuclear war, tries to avoid the local bully, loves school as much as Christmas, and believes he’s from another planet.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 7

The Shortest History of Japan

It’s no secret that I love Japan. When an ARC of the forthcoming The Shortest History of Japan arrived from author Lesley Downer, I couldn’t say no.

Downer describes her book as a fun informative read, aimed at everyone who’s ever been interested in Japan and would love to know more about the history but is daunted by thick history books that are all dates and difficult names. The Shortest History of Japan is a very potted history, touching briefly on key points in Japan’s story. For me it was at times a bit too brief; just as I was hooked into an unfamiliar period in Japan’s ancient past, Downer skipped on to the next era. I wanted more, and now I need to find the more that will satisfy me. The book is a success, then, because it has tantalised me. And for anyone who isn’t prone to running down rabbit holes of additional information, it’s an excellent introduction to the complexity of Japan’s history.

Divided into chapters that cover pre- and ancient history, through successive imperial eras leading up to the turmoil that resulted in the Tokugawa Shogunate, then the Edo period, the fall of the Tokugawa and, over five chapters, the story of the restoration and succession of the modern imperial court from Meiji to Reiwa, the book condenses key qualities of and events in Japanese culture and history; a sort of highlights package.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 5

Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World

In its flap copy and its cover blurbs, Feminist City is framed as a treatise on how urban spaces have ended up so gendered and how a different way of thinking about cities and the people who live and work in them might make them safer and more accessible for everyone, but particularly for women. Having read and appreciated the force of Caroline Criado Perez’s book on the gender gap in data, Invisible Women, I was hoping for something similar about urban geography in Leslie Kern’s book. Spoilers: I was disappointed.

Continue reading →
Posted on by Jan Hicks 4