GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
ALTHOUGH brought up and educated in what was for the period a middle class, liberal and progressive environment, from her early teens Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) had no intention of becoming a dutiful bourgeois wife.
A thirst for social justice, knowledge and a profession quickly brought her into contact with Russian revolutionaries, more specifically Marxists, and it was there that she began a lifelong struggle for communism.
Extremely well read, well-travelled and a fluent speaker of at least five languages, Kollontai rapidly became a grassroots activist, prodigious writer, skilled educator and propagandist.
JOHN REES replies to Claudia Webbe
STEVE ANDREW is intrigued by a timely and well-researched book that demonstrates the conflicted history of the central Asian country
RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth
STEVEN ANDREW is ultimately disappointed by a memoir that is far from memorable



