Considering the terrors that Mikhail Sholokhov lived through and nearly perished from in Stalinist Russia, it is a wonder that the Soviet novelist retained any sense of humour. Yet he did.
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Margaret Atwood's 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel The Testaments is her response to the question of readers of The Handmaid's Tale: how did Gilead fall? She's had 35 years to come up with the answer, and she doesn't disappoint.
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Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus takes a look at six books that belong on the bookshelf of ecosocialists.
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In a month when Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists rose up all over the world, there was plenty of new music providing inspiration. Here are the best new albums that relate to this month's political news.
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"Art is a weapon in the People's fight" declared an advert for a 1940 production of the play Women by the left-wing Workers Art Guild (WAG) that was active in Perth from 1935 to 1942.
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Martin Monath is one of the great, though barely known heroes of World War II. A German-Jewish Marxist, he fled the Nazis and operated underground, first in Belgium and then in France.
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After centuries under the yoke of English rule, Irish nationalists staged failed uprisings against British rule in 1798, 1803 and 1848. By 1858, Irish freedom fighters formed the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Known as the Fenians, they recruited among Irish soldiers in the British army to overthrow the British authorities.
However by 1867, the Fenian rising was crushed and dozens of their members sentenced to up 15 years in the British penal colony of Western Australia. Once there, they sent to Fremantle Gaol. Known as the "Convict Establishment" or the "Living Tomb", and built by convict labour in the 1850s, the men were subjected to a brutal regime of forced labour and floggings.
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Mat Ward takes a look at 10 new albums with something to say on politics and struggle around the world.
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Women’s health and chronic pain has been ignored throughout medical history, writes Gabrielle Jackson. Pain, and more specifically, pelvic pain has been seen as an intrinsic part of womanhood.
