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?
MARTIN VOPENKA’S previous novel The Fifth Dimension is a troubling, comfortless and problematic book — and that description largely applies to the Czech writer’s latest, in an astringent translation by Anna Bryson Gustova.
Written from the viewpoint of protagonist Marek, My Brother the Messiah weaves back and forth across the decades of a dystopian 22nd century.
During that time, a botched technological attempt to arrest global warming has resulted instead in a new ice age. As polar conditions spread southwards, massive European migrations begin as Scandinavians head to the centre of the continent and then, as conditions worsen, whole Czech and Austrian populations escape in turn to Greece.
PETER MASON is entertained by the autobiography of Charlie Harper, one of punk’s most enduring figures
JOHN CALLOW examines what went wrong for the Czech communist party in the recent parliamentary elections, where it failed to meet the threshold to return deputies and some now talk of the party abandoning its commitment to socialism
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s dissection of William Blake
RITA DI SANTO gives us a first look at some extraordinary new films that examine outsiders, migrants, belonging and social abuse


