STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
Latest editorial
Winter warmers
ANDY CROFT recommends three uplifting collections to ward off post-festive blues
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
JOHN GOHORRY'S Thirty-three Ostrich Cadenzas (Shoestring, £6) tells the story of the Japanese ostriches who escaped from a farm after the Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima in 2011.
It begins as a sort of extravagant black comedy. The ostriches take over the deserted town of Okuma, where they drink in bars, mate in bookshops and establish the utopian “Autonomous Ostrich Republic.”
When the “moonsuits” arrive with their Geiger counters, the ostriches are sent to the Tokyo Agricultural University for tests and experiments.
Similar stories
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
MEIC BIRTWHISTLE speaks to David Constantine about the fascination he shares with Brecht for the material exactness of Greek poetry