Fiction

Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They're much better than any column of political analysis.

Subcomandante Marcos

Tuesday, 09 April 2024 12:11

Dark Stories for Dark Times: The 2024 Crime Novel

Written by Dennis Broe

in Fiction

This year the Quais du Polar in Lyon, the largest European festival of crime novels and one of the largest in the world, in celebrating its 20th season, was marked by the intrusion into the spine of the novels by the real-world problems and catastrophes going on around the festival.…

Quais Du Polar Stieg Larsson Karin smirnoff Steve McQueen Lisbeth Salander

Wednesday, 27 March 2024 16:17

Maybe Monday

Written by Wayne Dean-Richards

in Fiction

Managers are mystics. Must be because they’re always telling the people who work for them about their fucking vision. Their fucking vision for the company, that is. Their fucking vision for the company always a trigger for what they call revised practices. A catchy little phrase meaning whatever your job…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 27 March 2024 14:45

Fiction about fiction: 'The Living and the Rest', by José Eduardo Agualusa

in Fiction

Written by Jenny Farrell

Since the Second World War, authors have regularly conceived of plots set around a cataclysmic event that cuts off people or places from the rest of the world. Some examples include Marlen Haushofer’s 1963 novel The Wall, José Saramago’s 1995 Blindness, and The Road, 2006, by Cormac McCarthy. For many…

Brecht

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 24 February 2024 15:39

Money & Blood

in Fiction

Written by Neil Campbell

Wayne Dean-Richards is a working-class writer, and middle-class agents and publishers just cannot relate to his stories. History, in England at least, shows that to be true. He writes how people speak, disregards the limitations of grammar, the King's English, and foregrounds voice and story over erudition and purple prose.…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Friday, 15 December 2023 09:07

Putting the ‘Who Dun It?’ back at the centre of hard-boiled crime fiction

in Fiction

Written by Dennis Broe

In the Anglo world, things generally get lumped together, but in the Francophone world the two kinds of crime fiction are worlds apart. One branch of French crime fiction is called le policier, one branch of which is the ‘police procedural’, another is the ‘police detective’. This line has links…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 13 December 2023 13:46

Prophet Song: A wake-up call for the middle classes?

in Fiction

Written by Jenny Farrell

Oh, oh, people of the earthListen to the warning the seer he said“Beware the storm that gathers here”Listen to the wise man.- The Prophet’s Song, Queen, 1975 That Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song has won the 2023 Booker Prize signifies a notable awareness regarding the dismantling of democracy in the…

Booker Prize Paul Lynch Queen

Saturday, 09 December 2023 10:04

Their Blood-Soaked Liberty

Written by Phil Brett

in Fiction

Socialist crime novels are perhaps not a genre that comes obviously to mind, either for those who read crime fiction or fans of the socialist novel. Yet a genre it is. The Belgian revolutionary Ernest Mandel was a lifelong enthusiast, writing a Marxist analysis of crime books. Pluto Press published…

Wednesday, 29 November 2023 10:19

The Sikh Snowman

Written by Owen Gallagher

in Fiction

A Christmas book for the child in your life, or in yourself......... Some snowmen had topknots. Some wore football scarves and skull caps. Some had veils over their faces. One had fairy wings. They all began to sing...... Snowfall, friendship and feelings combine in this heartfelt and celebratory story about…

Monday, 21 August 2023 20:03

Class, gender and authority: the life and work of Dorothy Edwards

Written by Geoff Sawers

in Fiction

Geoff Sawers introduces the life and work of Dorothy Edwards. Image above: Dorothy holding Dora Carrington's cat, credit: King's College, Cambridge, ref FCP/7/4/2/101 Born in 1902 or 1903, the Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards was of a generation of women that did not expect to marry since the respective generation of…

Wednesday, 16 August 2023 13:54

Small Infinities

Written by Paul Victor Tims

in Fiction

Introduction By Fran Lock Small Infinities is an appropriate title for a book – and an author – so enamoured of outlandish juxtaposition, paradox, and contradiction. While one useful description of this collection is as a work of socialist science – or “weird” – fiction, another is as broadly metaphysical.…