Category Archives: Reviews

Zola’s ‘Money’

Posted on January 23, 2022 by Eddie Playfair

Rougon-Macquart #18 A powerful anti-capitalist novel. Emile Zola’s wonderful 1890 novel ‘L’Argent’ (‘Money’) is set in the world of finance and share-speculation in 1860’s Paris. It is still fresh and relevant and should be on any reading list of anti-capitalist … Continue reading →

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Finding our voice in a crisis.

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Eddie Playfair

Blogging in the 2020s. It can be hard to write in a time of crisis. What can we possibly say that could be of any use to anyone? But when things are this bad, it’s also hard not to write. … Continue reading →

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Learning from Utopia

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

What is the function of alternative political and economic systems, whether actually existing or imaginary? Is it to offer hope that change is possible, or at least to provide some perspective on our own way of life?
Draws on ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin. Continue reading →

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‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers

Posted on November 22, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Bewilderment is an entirely rational response to what we are collectively doing to our planet. Confronted by the injustices, dysfunction and unsustainability of the world we’ve created, how can we not react with bewilderment? This wonderful novel is both an … Continue reading →

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“You either bend the arc or it bends you”

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Attack Surface’ by Cory Doctorow. ‘Attack Surface‘ (2020) is a gripping action-packed story of oppression and resistance with plenty of insights into the potential of new technologies and big data. It is also a powerful manifesto for the necessity of … Continue reading →

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‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘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 →

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Reading bell hooks.

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

‘Teaching to Transgress’ ‘Teaching to Transgress’ is as fresh and powerful in 2021 as when it was first published in 1994. Its messages about teaching as discovery, resistance and liberation are as vital today as ever. Reading bell hooks is … Continue reading →

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Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

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 →

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Learning, earning and the death of human capital.

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Eddie Playfair

Is there a clear predictive relationship between the amount of education ‘received’, as measured by qualifications achieved, and future earnings? The idea is strongly held by many policymakers and it plays a part in the public debate about investment in … Continue reading →

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‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

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 →

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Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

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 →

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Rebecca Solnit on Hope.

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

In a crisis, it is easy to despair. ‘Don’t mourn, organise!’ is a good mantra in such situations. Mourning has its place, but our response should be neither blind despair nor blind hope. We need to understand the objective reality … Continue reading →

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In praise of lightness – Calvino’s Leggerezza.

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Eddie Playfair

The Italian writer, Italo Calvino, was invited to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University in 1985 but died before he was able to deliver them. Luckily, we have the text of 5 of these 6 planned lectures … Continue reading →

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‘Unsheltered’ by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Eddie Playfair

Barbara Kingsolver’s novels are always fascinating and rewarding and her latest, Unsheltered (2019) is no exception. We follow two stories over a hundred years apart and set in the same location; Vineland, New Jersey, a town originally established as a … Continue reading →

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‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Eddie Playfair

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 →

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