MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
Latest editorial
Freedom at novels’ heart
FIONA O’CONNOR recommends two novels telling of real contemporary experiences that question the nature of liberty and fraternity in present times
The Trans-Siberian stops at Omsk
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Down with the Poor!
By Shumona Sinha
LesFugitives Press, £12.99
Eastbound
By Maylis de Kerangal
LesFugitives Press, £10.99
SHUMONA Sinha’s Down with the Poor! translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, sets up a complex and perplexing position on south Asian immigration to France.
The first-person narrative belongs to a young Indian woman, a translator at asylum appeal hearings in Paris. She is spending the night in police cells having smashed a bottle over a man’s head — an asylum-seeker.
More from this author
FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
FIONA O’CONNOR recommends an accessible and entertaining survey of post-war French philosophy and its relation to contemporary capitalism
FIONA O’CONNOR admires a collection that is a riposte to the armies of developers, estate agents, private capital speculators and their marketeers
