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Recent Posts
- ‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford May 15, 2021
- Reading bell hooks. April 5, 2021
- Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire. April 2, 2021
- Freire for today March 6, 2021
- Seven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education. February 27, 2021
- Learning, earning and the death of human capital. February 21, 2021
- ‘Listen to this’. February 13, 2021
- ‘The Ministry of the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson December 20, 2020
- Why the comprehensive college? September 20, 2020
- Exam results – what just happened? August 23, 2020
- Starting to rethink education. June 10, 2020
- Knowledge and education for the future. May 25, 2020
- England’s unexpected exam revolution. May 5, 2020
- Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’. May 3, 2020
- Rebecca Solnit on Hope. April 23, 2020
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Category Archives: Fiction
‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford
‘Light Perpetual’ is a wonderful celebration of life and love. It opens with some extraordinary time-stretching to describe the impact of a split-second destructive event in wartime. Then time is shrunk and stretched repeatedly in order to follow the ‘lost’ … Continue reading
Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.
Rougon-Macquart #2 Emile Zola’s ‘La Curée’ (1872), translated as ‘The Kill’, is an extraordinary novel of unbridled appetites, material and sexual, and of the moral decay and rottenness of unfettered capitalism. It shares a setting and many common themes with … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Brian Nelson, capitalism, corruption, desire, Emile Zola, Karl Marx, La Curée, modernity, Paris, Rougon-Macquart, speculation, The Kill
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‘The Ministry of the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
Fiction can change the world and the didactic approach or the ‘novel of ideas’ can be compatible with good storytelling. Like any work of art, a work of fiction can change us as individuals and, through us, help to make … Continue reading
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.
The personal is political, and this wonderful book is both entirely personal and deeply political. Nervous Conditions (1988) is the story of Tambudzai, a young woman growing up in rural Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) in the late 1960’s, told … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Africa, colonialism, Equality, inequality, liberation, Nervous Conditions, Race equality, racism, sexism, subjugation, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zimbabwe
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‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.
Richard Powers is an extraordinary writer. If you’ve not yet discovered his novels, I strongly recommend them. He tackles big ideas which concern all of us while at the same time telling compelling stories about complex and conflicted characters who … Continue reading
‘What if?’ – dystopias in fiction.
Fictional dystopias use the power of ‘what if?’ to change something or extrapolate particular social or technological trends and imagine the impact on people’s lives. The best ones are also good stories, well told, about people; their hopes, fears, feelings … Continue reading
The last Corsican.
“I’ve decided to keep this diary because I’m going to die in the next few days…I am condemned because, having refused to be evacuated with the others, I will be annihilated by the incendiary bombs which are systematically ravaging the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction
Tagged Corse Noire, Corsica, Jacques Mondoloni, Le Dernier Corse, The Last Corsican
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More fictional dystopias
Reading Dystopias offered an introduction to the genre of dystopian fiction through 4 classic dystopian novels. Here are four more which are also well worth reading. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) [211 pages] Fahrenheit 451: The temperature at which … Continue reading
‘Carthage’ by Joyce Carol Oates.
Joyce Carol Oates’ brilliant novel ‘Carthage’ carries the reader along on a compelling looping, zig-zag narrative which starts and finishes in the heart of a sympathetic comfortably-off family in the small upstate New York town of Carthage. Along the way, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged American Pastoral, books, Carthage, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth
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Hadrian, the enlightened pre-enlightenment leader?
Marguerite Yourcenar’s wonderful novel Memoirs of Hadrian takes the form of a personal memoir written for the future Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius by the emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) as he faces death. The book is a brilliant portrayal of a leader who … Continue reading
Reading dystopias
Reading dystopias Utopia: an imagined society or state of things in which everything is perfect or close to perfect. Dystopia: an imagined society or state of things in which things are very far from perfect to a frightening extent. An … Continue reading
Gulliver’s levels
Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, first published in 1726, mocks the travel journals of its day with their increasingly fantastical adventures. It is also brilliant social satire, mercilessly tearing through contemporary conventions and pretentions. It can also be read as a thought … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Philosophy, Reviews
Tagged Dialectic, emergence, Gulliver's travels, Jonathan Swift, learning, philosophy, reductionism
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Grosse Fugue by Ian Phillips (Alliance Publishing Press, 2012)
This is a story whose outlines are familiar but which we need to hear again and again. The story of Reuben Mendel is a twentieth century biography, a story of both world wars, the holocaust and its aftermath. It is … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Bach, Beethoven, Grosse Fugue, holocaust, Ian Phillips, Schubert
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