MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Kathy Gee - “History will absolve me”
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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
“History will absolve me”
The title of a four-hour speech made by Fidel Castro on 16 October 1953
Havana’s flower girls are predatory,
leave the shade of stone arcades
in a practiced pincer movement.
One identifies the mark, diagonals,
too close, across the unattractive man
who sweats, uncertain, in the square.
Confiding hand in suet elbow
she holds fast as another beauty
links the circle from behind.
One lipstick kiss and he is suckered.
Pose for selfies, take his money.
Scarlet skirts and pink silk turbans.
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by Widad Nabi