MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
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A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee by Victor Grossman
Informed by lived experience, an insider's view challenges stereotyped cold-war perceptions of the GDR
Victor Grossman with some of the works he published in the GDR
[Uli Kohls] 
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
WILL STONE takes a ticket to indie disco heaven, but misses the rarely performed tunes
Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band
TOM PIERSCIONEK recommends a remarkable series of interviews with those few and brave Israeli citizens who refuse to do military service
IN THE popular imagination, the German Democratic Republic is indelibly linked with ideas of authoritarianism, poverty, secret police, stuffy bureaucracy and a generalised absence of democracy.
Victor Grossman is uniquely well placed to challenge this McCarthyite narrative. Born in New York in 1928, he joined the Communist Party while studying at Harvard in the late 1940s. Drafted into the army, he defected to the GDR while stationed in Austria.
Marrying a German woman, studying and working, raising children and grandchildren, he lived in East Germany until its 1990 absorption into the Federal German Republic (FRG). He still lives in Germany today.
More from this author
From anonymous surveys claiming Chinese students are spying on each other to a meltdown about the size of China’s London embassy, the evidence is everywhere that Britain is embracing full spectrum Sinophobia as the war clouds gather, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
The US’s bid for regime change in the Islamic Republic has become more urgent as it seeks to encircle and contain a resurgent China, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
CARLOS MARTINEZ condemns Europe’s failure to develop genuine autonomy from US hegemony, as leaders like Starmer and Macron cling to a declining imperial order rather than building good relations with the emerging powers
Chinese socialist planning and action over decades have created the world’s greatest reforestation programme, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ, and now its lessons in fighting desertification and climate change are taking root worldwide
