Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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‘He was committed to ideals’
BRIAN PETERSON, the first historian to publish a biography in English of the West African revolutionary Thomas Sankara, talks to Angus Reid about what inspired the iconic leader, assassinated in 1987 after only four years in power
XMAS WAR: President Thomas Sankara (front) visits the front during the Mali-Burkina conflict in December 1985 over the Agacher [border] Strip
[Rolio75/Creative Commons]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
THOMAS SANKARA was on Brian Peterson’s radar from Africa history classes in 1991 when, he tells me, he seemed “a rare bright spot” in the African history of the 1980s.
Peterson’s first book investigated the Islamisation of southern Mali and how a whole population switched religions during the colonial period. It involved the systematic gathering of oral histories but when he returned on sabbatical in 2012, the presence of jihadist groups made the work unsafe.
Switching his attention to Burkina Faso, he began a grassroots study of Sankara’s revolution and realised that there is neither a basic outline of it or Sankara’s life. “Basic narrative and chronologies of major African figures haven’t been written, because historians avoid biographies. But a basic political biography of Sankara was essential.”
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