Daunderlust – meaning the compulsion to meander – is a term as applicable to the scope of Peter Ross’s latest essay collection as its content, collated as it is from four years of Scotland on Sunday columns. With a remit to report from within where most have never dared nor thought to enter, the peripatetic Read More
Split over the Bellfield Street venue’s spacious central hangar and a smaller alcove branching off near the entrance, this review commences as though one were walking into the latter space. Against the far wall, a projector loops Neil Scott’s self-explanatory series of short clips Nine Time-lapses from Hadrian’s Wall, each covering several hours in around five Read More
“It was wonderful or awful, comic or absurd, poetic or grotesque- to lose one family, then find you had another-but no one seemed able to say which, least of all me.” For those looking for a light summer-read to breeze through on their holiday, Will Boast’s Epilogue might not be the best choice. Telling the Read More
Duke’s Corner, luminary live music venue and purveyor of gourmet hot dogs and craft beers, has been expanding its cultural reach in recent months. This event, held on the second Sunday of each month at this bar on the junction of Brown Street and Blackness Road, sees artists from across Dundee and the surrounding Read More
In a time before forensics and fingerprints, a night train snakes its way through a far Eastern land. As it makes an unscheduled stop, murder occurs in a first class carriage. Conveniently, a detective also happens to be travelling in the same carriage. Readers may be forgiven for imagining themselves in an Agatha Christie novel Read More
This collection of short stories has been greatly anticipated for some time. And what better place to review The Book of Gaza than from Dundee, the twin city of Nablus since 1980? The collection is edited by Atef Abu Saif who is shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction,an annual literary prize run Read More
After a ten year absence which at times has felt almost as unbearable as the pregnant silences that characterise his texts, Kazuo Ishiguro has returned with his seventh novel, The Buried Giant. Set in post-Arthurian Britain, the book follows Axl and Beatrice, two elderly Britons, as they set off across country to visit their son, Read More
John Berger is a poet, Art critic, playwright and general European polymath. Collected Poems brings together nearly 60 years of work in one English language volume. Enhancing the start of each discrete section are beautiful, understated monotypes by his son, Yves Berger. The volume examines history, emigration, place and love; collectively it contemplates the impact Read More
George Mpanga, aka George The poet, is a street savvy Cambridge-educated 23 year old from North West London. His debut collection, Search Party, espouses a blend of spoken word and rap which explores life in the capital’s inner city housing estates, of which he also has much experience. Arguably, not since Gil Scot Heron has Read More
“We didn’t stand a chance, my siblings and I, when it came to loving tea.” Having dazzled the poetry world with her 2009 debut collection, Furniture (shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize), Lorraine Mariner has returned with an array of diverse and insightful poems Read More