GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
Optic Nerve
by Maria Gainza
(Vintage Publishing, £14.99)
THIS exquisite novel of a woman in her twenties searching for meaning through the paintings she loves is a stunning debut from Maria Gainza.
Part autobiographical fiction, part art criticism, it’s set in her native Buenos Aires and comes across as a subtle chronicle of a city, family life and a culture deeply rooted in the “southern cone” of Latin America.
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
DAVID NICHOLSON is thrilled – and shocked – by an opera that seethes and sizzles with passion and the depraved use of power
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
JOHN HAWKINS welcomes the passion, grief, precision and elegance of an eloquent witness of genocide



