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Moveable Feasts by Chris Newens<\/p>\n
What do you do when you want to write about food in one of the world\u2019s most celebrated gastronomic capitals as an Englishman? You have to go a bit off-piste. As readers spiral inwards from the 20th to the first arrondissements of Paris, Chris Newens navigates the distinct elements of each area with a thread of earnestness and sentimentality. You would be forgiven for expecting that the cuisine that still dominates modern cooking would prevail, but Newens\u2019 dedication to representing the undiscovered parts of the city demonstrates the beautiful tapestry that has risen out of multiculturalism.<\/p>\n
Most thrilling to the Western eye is his lucid descriptions of unfamiliar wonders \u2013 Congolese malangwa, grilled fish typically reserved for \u201cf\u00eates\u201d, or meen puyabaisse, a fusion of a classic French dish with Sri Lankan flavours. From swingers\u2019 clubs to restaurants solidaires (state-funded soup kitchens that offer entr\u00e9e, plat, dessert and the \u201chuman right\u201d of a French meal, wine), Moveable Feasts is unassuming, full of authenticity and homeliness. It is best described in the first chapter: \u201cCe n\u2019est pas un grand cru but\u2026 you should have a glass.\u201d The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia\u2019s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing by Jeffrey Wasserstrom<\/p>\n Democracy is under attack, autocracy is on the march, and those who dare to stand in the way will only be crushed. So goes the conventional narrative about the state of the world in this era of democratic decline. But the protagonists in US-based historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom\u2019s The Milk Tea Alliance refuse to be cowed by the long odds and seemingly indomitable regimes that confront their demands for freer and more democratic societies. They refuse to \u201cobey in advance\u201d.<\/p>\n The Milk Tea Alliance is a concise, engaging, and ultimately inspiring portrait of three young activists \u2013 Ye Myint Win (AKA Nickey Diamond) in Burma, Agnes Chow in Hong Kong, and Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal in Thailand \u2013 and the youth-based protest movements that have swept all three locations in the past decade. They draw inspiration from past dissidents, popular films, such as The Hunger Games, and, most importantly, each other. This does not mean they are destined to prevail in their respective struggles, but their combined stories offer a compelling testament to the power of courage, and the importance of continuing to hope against hope. Monsieur Ozenfant\u2019s Academy by Charles Darwent<\/p>\n Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Ozenfant (1886-1966) is today a forgotten figure. For three and a half decades from 1936, however, the painter and writer was a key figure in the British art world. When he arrived in London from Paris, he brought with him the tenets of modernism fresh from the fountainhead. Although his ideas were already known through his book Foundations of Modern Art (1931), the opening of the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in Kensington meant that forward-looking artists had access to the French avant-garde without the need to cross the Channel.<\/p>\n Ozenfant, friend and collaborator of Le Corbusier and Fernand L\u00e9ger \u2013 and co-founder of purism (a restrained and very French strain of modern art) that manifested itself in his hands as a crisply architectural form of cubism \u2013 has now been resurrected by the estimable Charles Darwent, a sage writer on midcentury art. As well as a diverting account of Ozenfant\u2019s life in Paris, London and New York, he includes his own translation of the diary entries he kept during his London sojourn that contain a mixture of picaresque views on the darkening politics of the time and his own life as a cultural emissary. The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis<\/p>\n In the picturesque 18th-century village of Little Nettlebed the heat descends on unsuspecting residents, drying up rivers, scorching the grass and bringing with it a series of unprecedented events. Unusual sea creatures wash up on the droughty riverbed of the Thames, crows gather on the roofs of those about to die and five sisters have been seen transforming into dogs. Unsettling? Very. But the haunting narrative of Xenobe Purvis\u2019s debut novel is made even more disturbing by the fact that it\u2019s based on a real-life case of \u201cbarking\u201d girls in Oxfordshire recorded in the 1700s.<\/p>\n Just below the surface of the narrative lies a penetrating social commentary, thrusting the reader into the minds of the villagers, some of whom would recall the witch trials. How will these small-town, religious people react to something they deem outside of the norm? With a level of neurosis, naturally. As the days get hotter, the patriarchal community leaders, quite literally, pick up their pitchforks. Ultimately, it is the word of the man against five eccentric girls, and through this, we see how little has changed since the 18th century. [See also: David Gentleman\u2019s pens\u00e9es for the novice artist<\/a>]<\/p>\n
Profile Books, 369pp, \u00a318.99. Buy the book<\/a>
By Sebastian Page<\/p>\n
Columbia Global Reports, 104pp, \u00a312.99. Buy the book<\/a>
By Katie Stallard<\/p>\n
Art Publishing, 236pp, \u00a325. Buy the book<\/a>
By Michael Prodger<\/p>\n
Hutchinson Heinemann, 272pp, \u00a316.99. Buy the book<\/a>
By Zuzanna Lachendro<\/p>\n
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