Jonathan Mirsky
Arrested Developments
Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century
By Orville Schell & John Delury
Little, Brown 478pp £14.99
On the day I received this book the lead foreign story in The Times was headed ‘Reformist Chinese President cracks down on liberals’. There is no sign that Xi Jinping, China’s president since March and the son of a veteran Party Central Committee member, is a ‘reformer’, or that he would do anything other than arrest those ‘liberals’ who boldly wore badges saying ‘citizen’, a person subject to the rule of constitutional law rather than ‘people’, cowering before the Party’s diktats.
Orville Schell is a prominent populariser of Chinese affairs (whom I have known for many years), now at the Asia Society in New York; John Delury, a younger scholar, teaches at Yonsei University in Seoul. They apparently expected something different from the new regime. At the congress where Xi was
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