The Making of the Impossible
Review by GWEN ANSELL October: The story of the Russian revolution China Mieville Verso, 2017 The Last Days of New Paris China Mieville Picador, 2016 “There is a brand of naive anticolonialism,” China Miéville has said, “that falls back into the ‘Noble Savage’ narrative; that simply replicates a notion of beautiful natives and a place […]
Men and their Dogs
by Gwen Ansell. Leonardo Padura is perhaps best known outside his native Cuba for his series of prize-winning, Havana-set detective novels, The Four Seasons, featuring the maverick cop and aspiring writer Lieutenant Mario Conde. The weightier and more ambitious Man Who Loved Dogs – it took Padura, he says, more than five years to write – also features an […]
Moses’ outro
Does life begin at 40? That’s the time signature Moses Taiwa Molelekwa would have reached on Wednesday, 17th April 2013. In recognition of his greatness we’re presenting some notes in his honour/memory. Moses outro deal an arm lose a shack scrutinise a scar encounter makwerekwere death in du noon or dobsonville outrage a constituency considercracksackanofficialrecitearebuttalaaceptarisk […]
Unchain the art
Gwen Ansell maps the distance between words and music, fiction and autobiography, subversion and submersion through an epistolary review or two books that operate at the limits of language and song. “According to my records there was something/More…mind bringing African control on the corny times/of the tunes he would play. There was Space/And the […]
Reading Fred Ho
A jazz suite in the key of red Gwen Ansell and Salim Washington celebrate the revolutionary life, language and hard-ass leadership of an unconventional saxophonist, composer and generous collaborator. Reading the text Prelude: Home is where the violence is “Everything I create starts with the music … [and music]… like any conscious human activity, can […]