The Eastern Europeans are at it again: getting all coy and mystical about The Meaning of Life and language’s inability to grasp it. Eastern European writers have the Big Questions tapped, you understand, but language can’t cut it. Yes, I’ve been reading Sandor Márai again, this time a collection of short stories called Magic, which […]
A number of things have, until now, put me off reading the novels of Martin Amis. There was the infamous and justified criticism that his father Kingsley voiced, declaring that his novels had “that constant demonstrating of his command of English”. There was that poor introduction to his work that was Time’s Arrow – perhaps […]
There may be some artistic value hidden deep in the mix, but the prime concern with 99% of hip-hop collaborations is marketing ‘synergy’. Like fancy fashion houses developing perfumes, the important thing is establishing the logo, and then attaching it to as many different markets/products as possible. Naomi Klein’s ground-breaking No Logo may have established […]
Out of the top corner of my eye, while sitting on a bar stool the other night, I saw the strapline on a Polish rolling news channel on the TV. It said “W Brukseli o kryzysie” or “In Brussels the crisis [is being discussed].” It got me wondering, and this is what I wondered: which […]
As happened in various European cities over the last fortnight, in Italy a number of high-profile protests took place against the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza which to-date has resulted in the death of up to 1,3001 Palestinians. In cities like Rome, Bologna, Milan, and Florence, amongst others, parades took place that included the […]
Aynsley Dunbar could’ve been a contender. Take the two overwhelming and contradictory pieces of evidence. One, his 1967 self-composed, acrid billowing account of romantic hindsight Warning, then place it alongside the other, his poodle rock sojourn of 1987, as a rather subdued skinthumper for a Whitesnake who went for the Rock N’ Roll Gok Wan […]
It may seem like heresy (and a rip-off of a Chuck D. line), but the Clash didn’t mean shit to me when I was growing up. I was six years old in the summer of ’77, and by the mid eighties their punk revolution had already long-been mainstreamed , commercialised (some would argue also by […]
The first story in John Berger’s Here is Where We Meet, is set in Lisbon. The narrator, John, by chance meets his mother while walking the streets of the city. There are two peculiar things about this meeting – the first is that his mother has been dead for fifteen years, and the second is that […]
Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer, a Palestinian activist who has legally contested land seizures. He is also one of the founders of Al Haq, a non-governmental organisation that works to protect human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. More importantly, for the purposes of this blog, he is a walker and a writer. These two […]