Michael Burleigh
‘It’s the Culture, Innit?’
The form of George Walden’s new book is as arresting as its content. Imagined members of his own family ask ‘Dad’, in the wake of an eight-year-old grandchild’s having been knocked unconscious by some marauding Somali, whether it is ‘time to emigrate’. Replying from vacation in southern France, Walden hurries off a 200-page reflection about modern Britain rather than a brief email, fax or letter. The answer to the question in the title is ‘try it for a bit’ – ‘it’ being America or France, although I’d personally recommend John Howard’s Australia.
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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