Lolita Torres in A fiance for Laura, 1955
[Public Domain]
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing
GORDON PARSONS steps warily in between the lines of Britain’s most famous diarist
SIMON DUFF recommends a recording of Arvo Part that takes the listener on a pilgrimage through seemingly distant times and events of the Bible
Romancing Yesenia: How a Mexican Melodrama Shaped Global Popular Culture
by Masha Salazkina
University of California Press, £25
WHY would a mother in the Soviet Union of the early 1960s as it clawed its way out of the darkness of Stalinism into a new dawn name her daughter Lolita — and not Audrey, Marilyn, Lucille or Debbie?
After all, the latter were setting aflame the passions of the Western world as Hollywood starlets became the face of a new form of cinema extending US cultural imperialism and the “American way of life” across the globe.
