It’s all here: magical realism, characters as big as gods, social (in)justice, love and death and the depredations of colonialism. Ten masterpieces from that gorgeous and perennially troubled continent. 1. The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa Llosa wrote several great novels – Aunt Julia and The Scriptwriter is probably…
Month: July 2016
The Most Important Publication of 2016
Nope – it’s not Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Some Rain Must Fall or Annie Proulx’s epic novel Barkskins or even Zero K by the master, Don DeLillo. It’s not the timely tomes Rio de Janeiro by Luiz Eduardo Soares or The Games: A Global History of the Olympics by David Goldblatt. It’s not Postcapitalism by Paul Mason or Thomas…
Rapture – by Sjohnna McCray
McCray’s themes in this first poetry collection are desire, identity and memory. He excavates his past and dredges up images and motifs that form a personal mythology. Many of the poems seem autobiographical. There is a particular focus on the imperfections of the human body: the stump of a father’s amputated leg; “flabby buttocks” and…