Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Compelling contradictions of an anti-capitalist activist
PAUL SIMON recommends the story of a charismatic malcontent
CATHARTIC: Leo Zeilig
ANGUS REID considers the power of the podcast as a vehicle for consensus building in opposition to mainstream media narratives
GLENN FOSBRAEY recommends a biography worth reading for both existing George Michael fans and those yet to be converted
FRANCIS DEVINE introduces a new collection of essays that draws on Pease McKenna’s example to indicate future paths for the movement
KEVIN DONNELLY and MARIA DUARTE review Shoot the People, The Last One For The Road, Rosebush Pruning, and Moana
JAMES WALSH recommends an exceptional documentary about the experience of Western doctors in Gaza
The World Turned Upside Down
by Leo Zeilig
(Iva Valley Books, £7.99)
THIS novel’s protagonist Professor Bianca Ndour is an outsized phenomenon, with her personal and academic contradictions bursting beyond the realistic confines of one mere individual. In many respects, she represents the values and vaulting hopes, as well as the weaknesses, of much of the contemporary left movement.
Writer Leo Zeilig tracks Ndour’s metamorphosis from a comparatively privileged mixed-race bourgeois background to trendy mindfulness self-help author and on to a remorseless and charismatic revolutionary academic.
As such, her intellectual journey reflects that of the anti-capitalist movement since the fall of many socialist states, with the lost wistfulness of the 1990s replaced with a more robust Marxist praxis since.
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