Matthew Leeming
Off Our Heads
I AM STAYING at the Kabul Intercontinental, which I can safely say is the worst hotel in the world. Two guests have recently drowned in the swimming pool. There is no cold water. let alone hot. Electricity is intermittent. The lifts don’t work, so I must get to my room by the service staircase and the kitchen. The only reason I stay here is that the bookshop, is excellent and sells Tajik vodka, which gives one a very specialised and unpleasant form of hangover, like a new and even more unpleasant form of consciousness. Journalists stay here because it is expensive and this, they feel, goes some way towards punishing their employers for their discomfort.
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
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad