This book tells the story of how Jeremy Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and a deep crisis in British democracy. It surveys the makeshift coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, and students who rallied to Corbyn. It shows how a novel social media campaign turned the media’s ‘Project Fear’ on its head, making a virtue of every accusation thrown at him. And finally it asks, with all the artillery that is still ranged against Corbyn, and given the crisis-ridden Labour Party that he has inherited, what it would mean for him to succeed.
The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another. Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more ‘plant-like’ existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares.
In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister’s husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming – impossibly, ecstatically – a tree.
What is it like to spend a month working with refugees in ‘the most complicated patch of land in the world’? When Bev Jackson’s holiday to India is cancelled, in October 2015, she feels an odd sense of relief. She has spent months watching the arrivals of refugees in Greece and is dismayed at the lack of support from the European Union for people fleeing war zones. In 2015, a million refugees, most of them from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, arrived in Europe. Well over half of them passed through the small Greek island of Lesvos. Bev and her wife decide to spend their month’s holiday volunteering with refugees on Lesvos as members of Starfish, one of the volunteer groups helping to receive and care for people who have crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey in search of safety.
A Month with Starfish is an account of her trip to a kaleidoscopic world. In these surroundings, Bev finds that her professional talents are of little use and instead she needs to learn how to register dates of birth for people who use a different calendar and how to draw a decent tortoise on a bus ticket. Volunteering with refugees proves an astonishingly joyful experience: Bev meets some of the most compassionate and resilient people in the world, volunteers and refugees alike, and makes many new friends. Amid this varied cast of characters, she finds herself on a crash course in human possibilities and her own potential for change.
A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of ‘Americanah’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, based on her 2013 TEDx Talk of the same name. What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay – adapted from her much-viewed Tedx talk of the same name – by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of ‘Americanah’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’. With humour and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century – one rooted in inclusion and awareness.
She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviours that marginalise women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences – in the U.S., in her native Nigeria – offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike. Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a best-selling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today – and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change. At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that Mason suggests has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership – in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership; lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism.
A fresh take on social class from the experts behind the BBC’s ‘Great British Class Survey’. Why does social class matter more than ever in Britain today?
How has the meaning of class changed? What does this mean for social mobility and inequality? In this book Mike Savage and the team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey look beyond the labels to explore how and why our society is changing and what this means for the people who find themselves in the margins as well as in the centre. Their new conceptualization of class is based on the distribution of three kinds of capital – economic (inequalities in income and wealth), social (the different kinds of people we know) and cultural (the ways in which our leisure and cultural preferences are exclusive) – and provides incontrovertible evidence that class is as powerful and relevant today as it’s ever been.
Red Rosa tells the life story of philosopher, economist, publisher, writer, organizer, political leader and martyr Rosa Luxemburg in full-color, graphic form. The story follows Rosa from her family life in Jewish Poland where she became the leader of a general strike at age fifteen and was exiled from her homeland at eighteen to her immersion into the then largest radical party in the world, the German Social Democratic Party, to her founding of the German Communist Party and leadership of the German revolution of 1919. This beautifully drawn graphic life gives Red Rosa her due as an iconic radical, but also portrays a fascinating woman with a rich love life, struggles with physical disability and an abiding love of literature and theatre. Rosa will contribute to the growing understanding of one of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries.
Hold Everything Dear is John Berger’s vital response to today’s global economic and military tyranny. From Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and 7/7, to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, it is a profound meditation on what political resistance means today, by one of the most compelling radical voices of our age. Storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours and, most recently, Here Is Where We Meet.
Despite the profound crisis of capitalism and the mass mobilizations of people around the world in response, there has been no successful contestation of neoliberalism’s hegemony. Inventing the Future is a major new manifesto that argues for a novel set of alternatives for the future – alternatives which seek to rekindle a popular modernity. Against the confused understanding of the hi-tech and neoliberal world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future the authors envisage a post-capitalist economy which is capable of advancing living standards, liberating humanity from work, and developing technologies which free us from biological and environmental constraints.
This title looks at how the Rojava Revolution came into being in the largely-Kurdish communities of northern Syria from 2012 onwards. It also gives an overview of the context within which this experience arose. The main purpose of this book, however, is to summarise what has been happening in Rojava, evaluate the ideology behind it, and show why it is a truly inspirational process. In short, it is a must have for anyone wanting to learn more about contemporary Middle Eastern politics and the real-world search for an alternative to oppression, exploitation, and violence