DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
ACCORDING to critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, abjection involves either a confrontation with our sense of physical being or a separation between the self and a rejected “other.” Objects of revulsion can be tangible, such as faeces and bodily fluids, but some forms of dread are abstract and ambiguous.
The New Abject collection of horror stories draws on the broad nature of Kristeva’s definition, which has inspired a loosely related set of tales that deal with the things that make us shudder and retch.
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
ANDY HEDGECOCK is astonished by a portrait of contemporary Greece, complete with political protest, organised crime and people trafficking, told from the point of view of — wait for it — runaway poultry
STEPHEN ARNELL looks back to when protesters took to the streets in London demand to Irish liberty, fair pay and free speech — and wonders what’s changed in 138 years


