Michael Smith
Are You for Real?
Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture
By Alice Sherwood
Mudlark 416pp £16.99
About twenty years ago, Alice Sherwood discovered that one of her friends was an impostor. At first, the lies he told were the usual Walter Mitty fantasies favoured by sad, deluded men – that he was working for MI5, that he was an aristocrat, that his father had been murdered – but they soon developed into something more dangerous. He got engaged to two women at the same time and stole money from his business partners. Luckily for her, she escaped financially unscathed. It was this personal brush with fraud that provided the spur for Authenticity.
The book begins with a study of various colourful swindlers from history, ranging from Joseph ‘Yellow Kid’ Weil (who inspired The Sting) to Elizabeth Holmes, once touted as Silicon Valley’s first female billionaire but now facing jail time for bilking investors in her blood-testing company, Theranos. Sherwood seems
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