July 2024, Issue 531 Fitzroy Morrissey on two fabulists * Richard Carwardine on the American Civil War * Jonathan Egid on Pascal * Michael Ignatieff on dictators * Marina Warner on Monique Roffey * Lucy Moore on Mughal India * Michael Bloch on Weimar Germany * David Willetts on the demographic crisis * Orlando Reade on Milton’s afterlives * Helen Bond on King Herod * Elizabeth Goldring on Robert Cecil * Piers Brendon on Lloyd George * Alexander Lee on Leon Battista Alberti * Valentine Cunningham on Christopher Isherwood * Rana Mitter on China * Anthony Paletta on Midwestern modernism * Will Wiles on rats * Tim Hornyak on AI * Thomas Morris on the gut * Zoe Guttenplan on Paul B Preciado * Ella Fox-Martens on Rebecca Watson * Stevie Davies on Anita Desai * Julia Jordan on Camille Bordas * Philip Womack on children’s books * and much, much more… and much, much more…
The Current Issue
Fitzroy Morrissey
Sufism Goes West
Shortly before his death, R C Zaehner observed that young Westerners who had turned away from Christianity were more often drawn to the religions of India and the Far East than to Islam. ‘The young’, Zaehner stated, ‘are not interested in switching from one dogmatic monotheistic faith to another: hence they are little interested in Islam except when Islam itself is turned upside down and becomes Sufism, which in its developed form is barely distinguishable from Vedanta.’ ‘Indeed,’ he went on, ‘that egregious populariser Idries Shah has gone so far as to claim Zen as a manifestation of Sufism.’ This, Zaehner declared, was historical ‘nonsense’. Zaehner was referring to Shah’s The Sufis, which, since its publication in 1964, had become the most widely read book on Sufism in English... read more
More Articles from this Issue
Michael Ignatieff
Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
By Anne Applebaum
Nearly three quarters of the world’s population, according to the experts, live in autocracies. Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc wants us to see the resemblances in these single-party, single-leader regimes, the network of connections they have established and the risk they pose to free peoples. The problem with her analysis is that these regimes differ as much as they resemble... read more
Richard Carwardine
American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850–1873
By Alan Taylor
A mountain of historical studies testifies to enduring interest in the American Civil War, a conflict still politically relevant in a nation riven over how to remember it. Those doubting that there is anything fresh to say about the bloodiest event in the republic’s history should read Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor’s brilliant, panoramic account of the conflict. Applying a wide continental... read more
Jonathan Romney
Twisters
By Lee Isaac Chung (dir)
In 1996, Jan de Bont’s tornado-chasing adventure Twister revived the disaster movie by using computer-generated imagery (CGI), at the time a relatively new technology. Now, in the belated follow-up – strictly neither a sequel nor a remake – the tornadoes have become more deadly and more frequent. But Twisters shows another perilous phenomenon: the trend for promising directors of independent films to be swept up in the whirlwind... read more
Jonathan Egid
A Summer with Pascal
By Antoine Compagnon (Translated from French by Catherine Porter)
I am precisely the target audience for this small book on the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Although I work on 17th-century philosophy (in a quite different part of the world, in my defence), I knew next to nothing about Pascal save for those things named after him – the unit of pressure, the triangle of binomial coefficients, the famous wager – before starting Compagnon’s... read more
Anthony Paletta
American Modern: Architecture, Community – Columbus, Indiana
By Matt Shaw
Columbus, Indiana, is an unusual spot. Most towns within fifty miles of Indianapolis are internationally known for, well, nothing at all. This one is renowned for a superb collection of modernist buildings, designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, I M Pei, Harry Weese, Kevin Roche, Robert Venturi and many more. Seven of these are US National Historic Landmarks... read more
Marina Warner
Passiontide
By Monique Roffey
A few years ago, a movement called #NousToutes staged a series of night-time guerrilla actions in Paris and began changing street names. Below the original plaque they posted one of an identical design that gave the name and date of a woman’s death. The inscription often added ‘murdered by a “compagnon” or “conjoint” or “ex-conjoint”’. The effect on passers-by like me was sobering and eye-opening. There were so many... read more
Most Read
moreJonathan Egid
A Summer with Pascal
By Antoine Compagnon (Translated from French by Catherine Porter)
Michael Eisen
The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?
By Miguel Farias & Catherine Wikholm
Donald Rayfield
Osip Mandelstam: A Biography
By Ralph Dutli (Translated from German by Ben Fowkes)
Tristia
By Osip Mandelstam (Translated from Russian by Thomas de Waal)
Kevin Power
Kairos
By Jenny Erpenbeck (Translated from German by Michael Hofmann)
Michael Ignatieff
Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
By Anne Applebaum
From the Archives
moreFrom the March 2020 issue
Peter Conrad
Warhol: A Life as Art
By Blake Gopnik
![](https://literaryreview.co.uk/wp-content/lr-files/2020/02/Issue-484-Mar-2020-200x266.png)
From the June 1999 issue
Christopher Hitchens
Some Times in America
By Alexander Chancellor
![](https://literaryreview.co.uk/wp-content/lr-files/2015/04/Issue-252-Jun-1999-193x266.png)
From the June 1989 issue
Hilary Mantel
What am I Doing Here
By Bruce Chatwin
![](https://literaryreview.co.uk/wp-content/lr-files/2015/08/Issue-132-Jun-1989-190x266.png)
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm