Fiction

Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They're much better than any column of political analysis.

Subcomandante Marcos

Tuesday, 08 January 2019 19:32

Sugar Plum

Written by Jan Woolf

in Fiction

Sugar Plum by Jan Woolf A winter’s day in 2008, in Dalston, London 6am Zeina wakes, and, remembering, keeps her body as still as she can. She lifts her hand to snap on the bedside light, gently turning her head towards the photograph in the thin green frame. There they…

Marx Memorial Library

Friday, 28 December 2018 18:56

Owton Manor Olympian: a short story by Craig Campbell

Written by Craig Campbell

in Fiction

Owton Manor Olympian by Craig Campbell Dale felt his ankles jar sometimes in the old Gazelles he'd bought the previous summer. They were yellow and faded like his Dad's nicotine fingers when he fell asleep in the big chair. As a boy he would creep past him in the small…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 17 December 2018 11:21

Dishwasher hands

in Fiction

Written by Craig Campbell

Dishwasher hands by Craig Campbell Saturday nights at the Dilshad were the worst. People let off steam in Hartlepool in the worst ways possible, like stray bullets looking for a spleen. From time to time I would glance through the crack in the kitchen door but their DNA was always…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 11 December 2018 19:25

The Baton: a short story by Jan Woolf

in Fiction

Written by Jan Woolf

Marx Memorial Library is hosting a series of readings from left-wing fiction writers. Each month a fiction writer, dramatist or poet will read from current work and discuss their writing processes with the audience. These sessions are ideal for avid readers as well as writers. The writers in February will…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 05 December 2018 18:14

Decolonising the mind: the life and work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

in Fiction

Written by Jenny Farrell

Jenny Farrell celebrates the life and work of the African Marxist writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Ngũgĩ turned 80 this year. He was born into colonial Kenya in 1938 and witnessed in his youth the Mau Mau War of Independence, which ended in1962. Ngũgĩ has written prolifically. His first major novel…

The "War to End All Wars," like all the wars that have followed it, discarded human lives on all sides. Here, a German prisoner helps British wounded make their way to a dressing station. Image: Imperial War Museum

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 07 November 2018 13:37

The Discarded Soldier

in Fiction

Written by Jenny Farrell

Jenny Farrell introduces a little-known short story by Liam O'Flaherty 11 November 2018 marks the centenary of the ending of World War I. During that bloody slaughter, the propagandists described it as the “war to end all wars”. One hundred years and as many wars on the militarists in the…

Remembrance Day WW1

Saturday, 29 September 2018 17:54

José Saramago: visions of a better world

Written by Jenny Farrell

in Fiction

Jenny Farrell pays tribute to the communist writer José Saramago, whose vision of another, possible world is still relevant today. Twenty years ago, on 8 October 1998, the communist writer José de Sousa Saramago was the first Portuguese author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first fifty years of…

Monday, 03 September 2018 22:31

Cré na Cille: a comedy and a bald statement of unacceptable class rule

Written by Eoin Ó Murchú

in Fiction

Eoin Ó Murchú reviews Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille, translated from the Irish as The Dirty Dust by Alan Titley, Yale University Press 2015 Cré na Cille is regarded as the greatest modern prose work written in the Irish language. Its depiction of the reality and context of peasant life is…

Ulysses Flann O'Brien James Connolly

Friday, 03 August 2018 15:39

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: a literary exposure of The Great Money Trick of capitalism

Written by Jenny Farrell

in Fiction

Jenny Farrell discusses one of the great working class novels in English literature, a literary exposure of the 'Great Money Trick' - the exploitation inherent in capitalism. Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is the first important working-class novel in English literature. It was written between 1906 and 1910 and…

Robert Tressell social realism the great money trick

Friday, 22 June 2018 22:52

Emily Brontë, Heathcliff and imagining a classless society

Written by Jenny Farrell

in Fiction

Jenny Farrell discusses ‘Wuthering Heights’, and its subtle, skilful imagining of a more humane, classless society, where unequal gender difference is replaced by an equality of personhood. 30 July 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth. Her novel “Wuthering Heights” (1847) is an amazing, creative challenge to the…

Wuthering Heights