D J Taylor
Literature and Leviathan
The exact circumstances of D B C Pierre’s triumph in the 2003 Man Booker Prize were these. The five-strong judging panel convened for its long-listing meeting sometime in the middle of August. The opinions expressed at this preliminary get-together are usually fairly tentative: the judges are still getting to know the novels under discussion; a mild preference is generally as far as it goes. Here, by contrast, unprecedented communal fervour prevailed. One after another, four of the five judges shuffled their notes before them and exclaimed that they had read this terrific novel called Vernon God Little about the US Columbine High School shootings and…
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'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
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress