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 round-up: July 15, 2019
MAT COWARD reviews American Spy, Whisper Network, A Shroud Of Leaves and A Secret Life
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
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.
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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
The Morning Star sorts the good eggs from the rotten scoundrels of the year
TOMASZ PIERSCIONEK relishes a collection of cartoons that focus on Palestine from the period 1917 to 1948
Two new releases from Burkina Faso and Niger, one from French-based Afro Latin The Bongo Hop, and rare Mexican bootlegs