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: April 18, 2023
Patricide, double identity, surveillance paranoia and an all-female crime ring that has the air of an instant classic
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
THE setting for THE MESSENGER by Megan Davis (Zaffre, £14.99) is contemporary Paris, and its never-quite-declared war between the inner city and the suburbs, the rich and the poor, the white and the not white enough.
It centres on Alex, a young man raised in both France and the US, who’s just been released from a prison sentence for his part in the murder of his journalist father.
He didn’t do it — but the trouble is, he almost did. Driven by guilt at having sold out a friend to get a lighter sentence, and anger at his wasted youth, he is now set on finding out who finished his dad off, after Alex and his friend left him beaten but alive.
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