John Dugdale
A Devil on the Highway
No Country for Old Men
By Cormac McCarthy
Picador 309pp 16.99
The Border Trilogy of the 1990s turned Cormac McCarthy from an obscure, reclusive author into a fêted, movie-adapted but still reclusive bestselling writer. Set in the 1940s and 1950s (although it’s forgivable to assume that All the Pretty Horses, the first and best-known novel, takes place much earlier), they essentially portray the last cowboys. In the bleak, elegiac No Country for Old Men, set in a more or less contemporary Texas, he turns his attention to another central figure of the Western, making his hero and mouthpiece one of the last old-style sheriffs.
The novel is a glorified chase thriller, which begins with Moss, a Vietnam veteran and retired welder, making a discovery. While out hunting in the Texas–Mexico borderlands, he finds three abandoned cars containing two dead bodies and a third man who’s barely alive – clearly the result of drug couriers
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
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