The Future of an Illusion
Stephen Marche’s The Next Civil War is a thought experiment imagining the ‘two Americas’ decisively parting ways.
9 Articles by:
Houman Barekat
Houman Barekat is a literary critic and co-editor of The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online.
Brilliant Futures
Thuận’s novel Chinatown moves from Hanoi to Leningrad to Paris, as its Vietnamese migrant narrator charts how the ‘future’ shifted in the 1990s from the East to West.
The Story of a Suppressed Massacre
William Gardner Smith’s republished 1963 novel ‘The Stone Face’ tells the story of a black artist who hopes to escape American racism in Paris – only to encounter the French government’s violent suppression of the struggle for Algerian independence.
Barry the Military Contractor
Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Batlava Lake mixes Gardeners’ Question Time with the discovery of mass graves in Kosovo, in a story of the late 1990s.
Hamburg’s Social Romantics
A new book explores the development of St. Pauli, a German football club whose fans responded to the decay of the 1980s and rise of the far-right on the terraces by adopting radical politics.
Jess Phillips Is Not the Answer
Jess Phillips wants to present herself as a truth-teller who is in touch with the concerns of ordinary people – but behind the shtick she is a candidate for whom PR matters more than politics.
‘Let’s Later This’
Will Wiles’ novel Plume depicts the aftermath of the “property-owning democracy.”
Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
Brexit has shaped an era of politics around competing narratives of Leave and Remain; to be relevant, the left must tell its own story.
Surveillance Dystopia
In Sam Byers’ future, tech utopians and right-wing populists find common ground.