Reading

William Cuffay, Black Chartist

Just read an interesting pamphlet called “The Story of William Cuffay, Black Chartist.” It’s quite a story. His grandfather was an African, sold into slavery in St Kitts, where his father was born a slave. Somehow he ended up being…
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Hermeneutical injustice

I caught a piece in the TImes Literary Supplement 3rd October issue with a really interesting snippet. The article, which I believe was by Miranda Fricker, said there were two types of injustice that people suffer as knowers of information…
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“Rushing to Paradise” by J.G. Ballard

I read “Crash” a while back. Everything that happened in the book from beginning to end was completely unbelievable, but still I quite liked it. It was somehow compelling, like the car crashes it described. The characters were unreal, human…
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“Afterwards” by Rachel Seiffert

The style of writing is very conversational. No beauty, not even many full sentences. The sort of writing with not many verbs. Just reportage,and not always very grammatical, like you were hearing someone tell you it on the phone. That…
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“Complicity” by Iain Banks

I was attracted by the political element of the story, and also the fact that parts of it are written in second person, an interesting idea that I am exploring at the moment in my own writing. Unfortunately I found…
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“Identity” by Milan Kundera

Warning: this review gives away the ending. There’s something intensely dissatisfying about stories that end “but it was all a dream and then she woke up.” Logically, I suppose there shouldn’t be. We accept that a story is made up,…
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