ampersand26

IN DALMATIA (MEDITERRANEAN CROATIA)

Tisja Kljaković Braić

“So here we have another book speaking to Mediterranean marriage, with this same entwined sense of delicacy, humour and light mockery. The book, simply called The Two of Them, by Split painter and cartoonist Tisja Kljaković Braić, consists of ninety (mostly black-and-white) cartoons in which there exist, in principle, but two figures. Namely, The Two of Them: A Wife, a woman of unspecified middle age who is at war with surplus kilograms and the metamorphosis of her own body; and A Man, a guy who is, for much of the book, on the couch in his nether garments (or underpants) watching football …”

In The Strip

See the full piece here

VARIETIES OF ISLAM

Jacob Agee

“So the DUP, for example, should see Islamists as kin, and we should view Islamists the same way we would likely view such Protestant parties, whose interpretation of Protestantism and its relation to politics is about on par with elements of the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of Islam and politics.”

In Holy Writ

Read the full piece here

THE IRISH PROBLEM

Gabriel Rosenstock

“There’s a clue in the name itself, Irish. You see, the Irish don’t speak Irish! Not anymore. Less than 10% of the population. A lot less! Why is this? Well, there are lots of reasons.”

In The Citadel and Its Discontents

Read the full piece here

THE IDENTITARIAN DELUSION

Gerry Cambridge

“Poetry, an art once considered a free space for intellectual, emotional and spiritual enquiry and exploration, seems increasingly an arena governed and to some degree imperilled by thought-police. The ability to invent, or re-imagine, such as would be extended to any novelist, is being constricted.”

In Feuilleton

Read the full piece here

GANGA

Malachi O’Doherty

“There is no official religion of moon worship that anyone will own up to, but both the Muslim and the Hindu prostrate themselves before her. I have seen a Muslim tie his camel to a palm tree in North Africa and bow to the east, to Mecca, the full moon low in the sky, right in front of him. Further east, when they bow towards Mecca once a month, they face the new moon setting.”

In Trojan Horse

Read the full piece here