STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: May 15 2023
Literate Marxists, surgical prose, lifelike Highlanders and a body on the beach
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
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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