Countries that have ceased to exist hold a certain fascination. Especially when this has happened to a neighbouring country within one’s own lifetime. Katja Hoyer’s “Beyond the Wall” tells the story of the GDR – the short-lived attempt to create …
At its release in 1985, this was praised as the ultimate biography of the infamous German terror organization, Rote Armee Fraktion. And to this day, I can’t imagine a more perfect telling of this traumatic story.
Will Self’s novel “Great Apes” is both deeply unsettling and darkly hilarious – an uncomfortably precise satire on the nature of civilisation.
Night after night, a man stands by his elevator with a suitcase, waiting for the secret police to take him away and punish him for his crimes.The man is the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the setting is Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the crime is his music.
While not a definitive biography, Sylvie Simmons’ book works as a short and entertaining introduction to the life and work of a truly unique artist.