In his 1921 “Manifesto on the Immediate Futurisation of Life” Bruno Jasieński called for Poland’s national poets – “the stale mummies of mickiewiczes and słowackis” – to make way from the “plazas, squares and streets” for the new: Futurists like himself. Many years later, as Soren Gauger tells us in the afterword to this excellent […]
Poland’s first track suit novel? Dorota Masłowska’s debut novel, published when she was only 19 and causing a sensation in her native Poland, attracts labels and chin-stroking disquisitions on the State We Are In. Translated by Benjamin Paloff, the original Polish title translates as: The Polish-Russkie War Under a White and Red Flag. Published in America under the title Snow White and Russian Red
Latest novel from DBC Pierre, Booker prize winning author of Vernon God Little.
The reflections of a seasoned activist, Rebecca Solnit, on activism and movements for change.
Vernon God Little is the story of the aftermath of a high school massacre and the accompanying judicial shambles and media circus. Winner of the Man Booker (2003), and Whitbread prize for a first novel (2003).
From 1975 to 1994 legislation banned spokespeople of proscribed organisations, such as Sinn Fé©®, from the Irish media. This collection of essays discusses the history and effects of the section 31 ban.
Three years ago I wrote anarticle on the European Constitution, or to be more precise, the treaty to establish a Constitution for Europe. When the editor asked me to revisit the subject on the occasion of the Lisbon referendum in Ireland I was immediately encouraged by the words of former Taoiseach or Ireland, Bertie Ahern: […]
In Polish it is called “tarcza antyrakietowa,” or anti-missile shield. But therein lies a fine irony. “Tarcza” also means target, which is what some fear the country will become if the mooted ten missile interceptors and the accompanying US military presence required to service them are installed. The Polish translation of US Defence Secretary Robert […]
How will Putin’s Russia fare if and when oil and gas prices fall? How much of Tony Blair’s talk about a ‘third way’ in politics was empty populism? How serious is de Villepin’s commitment to eradicating poverty? How much of Zapatero’s popularity can be attributed to anti-Americanism? Are the New York Times and other newspapers […]
Poland seems to have settled into a rather strange electoral pattern: every time a general election is held the incumbent party is not just defeated, but virtually annihilated. So it was in 2001, when the post-communist SLD wiped the floor with the AWS (a conglomerate of post-Solidarity parties) which then ceased to exist. And so […]
