A flying visit: Palaver, by Bryan Washington, reviewed
A mother travels impulsively from Texas to Tokyo to spend time with her estranged son when she hears an unfamiliar catch in his voice over the phone
Am I a useful idiot visiting Uzbekistan’s first art biennial?
In the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, in the heart of the ancient silk-road city of Bukhara, dozens of abstract…
Communing with the dead
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
Souls for sale
Ursula Le Guin once described speculative fiction as ‘a great heavy sack of stuff, a carrier bag full of wimps…
Plumbing the depths
Spare a thought for the white van man. It’s not yet nine on a summer’s morning and already Joseph, a…
Rival magicians
Mordew ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, as Elton John nearly sang. If they escape the ravages…
Together and apart
Twins are literary dynamite. For writers, they’re perfect for thrashing out notions of free will, the pinballing of cause and…
Bernadine Evaristo shoulders weighty themes lightly: Girl, Woman, Other reviewed
It’s a slippery word, ‘other’. Taken in one light, it throws up barriers and insists on divisions. It is fearful…
