Books
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Beyond the fog of war: books to help us understand the invasion of Ukraine
With Russian forces pushing deep into Ukraine, bombarding Kharkiv, Kyiv and other cities, and an unprecedented wave of western sanctions pushing…
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Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga review – crisis in colonial Rwanda
“Kamanzi, our sub-chief, came to take away our children.” Aminatta Forna The Guardian So begins a trail of misfortune that…
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Is Tourism Destroying the World?
Though it’s an uncomfortable reality (who doesn’t like to travel?), it’s something award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker devoted five years of her life…
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A cosmic ocean of shame: Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend confronts a history beyond the ken of storytelling
Are there subjects so immense in historical scope and in depths of human suffering that a form engineered to tackle…
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A Death in Malta by Paul Caruana Galizia review – courage under fire
Journalism. John Simpson The Guardian So is outing hapless celebrities over their sex lives, or researching long-form pieces about the…
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Melbourne presentation of book on woman-symbol of the anti-occupation struggle in Cyprus
She saw her husband, her father and other close relatives killed in front of her. She saw Turkish soldiers raping…
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Roxane Gay: ‘I’m trying to move further left because that’s the only way that we’re gonna achieve change’
Before the pandemic, Roxane Gay was constantly on the road. Bim Adewunmi The Guardian When the lockdowns of early 2020 came into…
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Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984
A few years ago, I got what, for a writer of political fiction, is a dream job. Sandra Newman The…
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Fascism in America: a long history that predates Trump
Pro-Nazi propaganda, courtesy of the US post office? Rich Tenorio The Guardian This unlikely scheme was hatched by George Sylvester…
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Will AI replace writers — and the rest of us? An L.A. scholar-poet games out the future
On the labor front, streaming businesses like Netflix have robbed TV writers of residuals; song lyricists have been decimated by Spotify; and…
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‘Greed is amoral’: how Wall Street supermen cashed in on pandemic misery and chaos
New York finance journalist Scott Patterson reports how savvy investors used the devastation of the pandemic to reap billions in…
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Her Voice: Women’s empowering stories of courage and transformation find resonance in the US
My eyes popped wide open when I found Varvara’s e-book: “Her Voice.” Dr. Elizabeth Marmaras I read the first chapter…
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In J.M. Coetzee’s latest story collection, questions of the soul become urgent as the body becomes frail
What may be surprising to some about this collection is that the stories have all appeared before in some form…
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Wifedom by Anna Funder review – a brilliant reckoning with George Orwell to change the way you read
Blending forensic research, fiction, life writing and criticism, Funder upends the legacy of literary triumph to reveal the woman behind…
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Philosophy Could Have Been a Lot More Fun
Diogenes of sinope, a beggar who lived on the streets of Athens in the fourth century B.C.E., has been hailed…
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The big idea: do we need to dismantle the literary canon?
The temptation to chuck out the old is strong, but can only be part of the answer Jeffrey Boakye The…
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