John Dugdale
Brothers In Arms
THE SHINING INTELLIGENCE, suave prose and conceptual ingenuity of Richard Powers’s work consistently earn him admiring reviews, but his low profile and potentially off-putting reputation as a ‘novelist of ideas’ have hitherto meant that his books are less widely read than those of noisier authors. With his astonishing eighth novel, far more ambitious and populous than its predecessors, he seizes his rightful place in the front rank of contemporary American writers.
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The minimalist Fumio Sasaki 'confesses that as he began to purchase fewer consumer goods, his meals shrank in size. He decluttered and lost weight. Accumulation is not just an economic way of life but a form of embodiment too. Enlightenment is reduction.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/gardens-of-emptiness
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties