CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Passing: An Alternative History of Identity
Remarkable exploration of how we construct our sense of belonging
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
“PASSING,” according to Lipika Pelham, is “the act of living or imitating a life belonging to an identity other than the one you have been assigned by society.”
But as the book Passing’s subtitle suggests, this is not just another survey of the contemporary celebratory craze for a recognition of individuality in our mass-conscious world. The author recognises that the quest for identity, an essential facet of humanity, has “no absolute markers to measure our being or belonging.”
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