JOE GILL speaks to the Palestinian students in Gaza whose testimony is collected in a remarkable anthology
Crime fiction round-up: July 15, 2019
MAT COWARD reviews American Spy, Whisper Network, A Shroud Of Leaves and A Secret Life
MARY CONWAY delights in a rarely performed comedy that recalls a Britain we remember in our bones
JEAN ROBERTS appreciates the way traditional panto can be remodelled into critique of the academy schools system
MARY CONWAY is riveted by a superbly crafted glimpse into the soul of a cast-off US star
MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
SET amid Thomas Sankara’s socialist revolution in Burkina Faso, American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (Dialogue Books, £14.99) is a most unusual espionage story.
Marie, its heroine, is a rarity — a black woman working in US intelligence in the 1980s. She’s desperate to undertake real work rather than the condescending scraps she’s thrown in the Ivy League world of the Feds and, as a child of the cold war, happy to do her bit against the spectre of communism.
Similar stories
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces
The Morning Star sorts the good eggs from the rotten scoundrels of the year
