First posted September 23, 2016 Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 – by Yang Jisheng Reviewed by Jonathan Mirsky ‘I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my father who died of starvation in 1959, for the thirty-six million Chinese who also starved to death, for the system that brought about their death, and perhaps for… Read More ‘Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962’ – by Yang Jisheng
Simone Weil’s thoughts on the unmaking of the self.. the postwar publication of the great bulk of her writings, including The Need for Roots, was overseen by one of her greatest admirers, Albert Camus. By Robert Zaretsky Eighty years ago on this date, one of the 20th century’s most unusual and unsettling thinkers died at… Read More The Decreationist
First posted January 06, 2019 To mark the centenary of the first world war’s end, Peter Jackson has created a visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front. This he has done using state-of-the-art digital technology to restore flickery old black-and-white archive footage of the servicemen’s… Read More They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson’s electrifying journey into the trenches of the Great War
NB: This is one of the most moving tributes to Albert Camus that I have read. It is also crystal clear. DS He had succeeded in saying in his fevered way and in an argument as taut as a bow why, despite the fury and horror of history, man is an absolute; and he had… Read More ALBERT CAMUS: by Nicola Chiaromonte
I value George Orwell’s writing for his devotion to truthfulness and his recognition of all the ways that truths get corrupted. This is why, even if his private mores are of his time, his public writing still gives us tools to think about ours. By Rebecca Solnit The feminist writer Moira Donegan recently mocked contemporary social… Read More George Orwell in an age of moralists
Japan has marked the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima where the mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the G7 leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”. On Sunday a peace bell tolled at 8.15am, the time the bomb was dropped. About 50,000 participants in the outdoor memorial ceremony… Read More On 78th anniversary of atomic bomb, Hiroshima mayor says nuclear deterrence ‘folly’
Subhash Gatade First posted August 06, 2017 For a section of people – whose number is diminishing fast – it is a moment of nostalgia when idealism was in air and sacrificing oneself for the cause of emancipation of humanity was looked at with respect, whereas for a larger section which is being intoxicated with… Read More RIP Bhiku Daji Bhilare: the man who saved Gandhiji’s life in 1944
The Czech novelist found himself silenced by the communist regime at home, but achieved international fame with playfully philosophical fiction Czech writer Milan Kundera, who explored being and betrayal over half a century in poems, plays, essays and novels including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died aged 94 after a prolonged illness, Anna Mrazova, spokesperson… Read More Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being author dies aged 94
Terry Bell Blanche La Guma who died on Thursday, aged 95, was one of the most unacknowledged veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle. A nurse and midwife, principled, dedicated and intensely loyal, she gladly lived in the shadow of her writer husband Alex who died and was buried in Cuba in 1985. One of her proudest… Read More Obituary: Blanche La Guma
After the truth-shower 