This sleek and brutal film, like Roberto Saviano’s book on which it is based, is a work of docu-fiction, but it is only a light transposition of the everyday reality for Neapolitans and their ongoing relationship with the Camorra (while the Sicilian Mafia/Cosa Nostra are the best known, they are not the only Italian criminal organisation; others ( Read more... )

Some time ago, I watched a documentary about the coldest inhabited place on earth, a town in Siberia where, if the generator failed, everyone would die within four hours - where the seasonal melting of the highest permafrost caused by the warmth of buildings gave the architecture skewed, Lovecraftian angles - and where the coffins, due to the same ( Read more... )

It’s been some time since I read James Young’s other work on that paradigmatic Germanic femme fatale, Nico: Songs They Never Play On the Radio. From memory, this volume contains some of the same material but is an expanded version which also includes a great deal of later material, including the making of Camera Obscura (produced by John Cale) and ( Read more... )

It was with some interest that I embarked upon Mark Fisher (better known as k-punk)’s new work of theory - his widely- and justly-feted pop culture blog being one of the most impressive meldings of theory and cultural analysis online (and one which never strays into inaccessibility), as well as being impressively prescient. His new work deals ( Read more... )

Knowledge may be power, but sometimes acquiring that knowledge seems too tiresome a task. In this light - and given that my professional life increasingly involves knowledge about global finance and economics - I’ve been attempting to get past the usual click:off response that my brain has in regard to anything about economics, in order to try to ( Read more... )

For a country which has been a Mecca for tourism, it’s surprising how little literary travel writing there is about Thailand (particularly on the part of Australians, for whom Bangkok is a likely stopover on the way to, gosh, nearly anywhere else). But perhaps that relates to the reasons many go to the country (sex tourism, backpacker parties or ( Read more... )

For those who have seen the spread of vegetarianism as reaching its zenith, it’s interesting that the major contribution of meat-eating to global warming is providing a new impetus to vegetarianism, one based on self-interest rather than compassion for others (and therefore, one might assume, providing an argument more likely to be accepted and ( Read more... )

Place your hand on your heart and say…
‘I admire rich people!’
‘I bless rich people!’
‘I love rich people!’
‘And I’m going to be one of those rich people too!’If you find this a chilling statement, you’re not alone. In her new work, Barbara Ehrenreich’s target is ‘positive thinking’ in the United States (although the situations she describes will ( Read more... )

Catharine Arnold has already taken us through the history of burial practices in London, in her fascinating earlier work Necropolis; here, she explores the treatment of the mad - and theories of madness - through a history of London’s Bethlehem Hospital, better known as ‘Bedlam,’ a byword for unwanted disorder and uproar. Bedlam doesn’t reach the ( Read more... )

So I keep telling people, "I'm reading this fascinating book about traffic,' and they're like, 'that doesn't sound that fascinating...' But actually, anyone who drives tends to have strongly held pet theories and peeves (and those who don't will generally have their own, from the vantage point of a non-driver), and this book explores them all ( Read more... )