The issue of personal bankruptcy – core of the novel – is still something of a taboo theme in the western world. The question of whether bankruptcy is the ‘ultimate’ taboo of a materialist society is asked directly in the book . Yet bankruptcy laws have been changed (rather, heavily relaxed) over recent years to [...]
“When I was finally arrested in Hampshire, it wasn’t with sniffer dogs and screaming sirens. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon.” – Farah Damji, Try Me When a memoir begins with the author’s childhood abduction and ends with her prison sentence, it isn’t unreasonable to expect that the intervening pages be at least mildly diverting. [...]
The shadow of Sheriff Joe Arpaio hangs heavy over this book. As head of the Maricopa County jail system in Arizona he has instituted programmes in which prisoners are fed ‘expired’ meat; are triple-bunked to house 800 in a facility originally meant for 360; and he boasts that it costs less to feed the inmates [...]
Stuart Derrick reviews, Stoke Newington resident and Birkbeck College Lecturer, Jonathan Kemp’s first novel. First time novelist Kemp’s book is an intriguing look at the homosexual experience through the prism of male prostitution over the past 100 years. Episodic in structure, it flits between the lives of three men living in London in different times. [...]
