To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: May 15 2023
Literate Marxists, surgical prose, lifelike Highlanders and a body on the beach
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
IT’S 1943 in THE LAZARUS SOLUTION by Kjell Ola Dahl (Orenda, £9.99) and technically neutral Sweden hosts refugees from occupied Norway. The Norwegian Legation is responsible for their welfare, a purpose undermined by the fact that loyalties to left or right count in exile much as they did at home.
Now the Legation has lost one of its couriers, who was taking money and documents to resistance fighters across the border. They need to know who killed him and why, and hire a boozy, ageing writer, with a background in leftist politics, to find out.
As mind-bendingly twisty and as playfully philosophical as espionage fiction must always be, the novel also benefits from the peculiar atmosphere of a neutral zone, where a hidden war rages even as the combatants politely tip their hats to each other when passing in the street.
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