Welcome to the April issue of ABR! Highlights include:
• Hypocrisy in the Vatican in Frédéric Martel's new book
• Alecia Simmonds on misogyny and malice in Married at First Sight
• Paul Giles on Gerald Murnane's revised novel A Season on Earth
• Andrea Goldsmith's new book Invented Lives
• Sheila Fitzpatrick on Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill in The Kremlin Letters
April 2019, no. 410
Barney Zwartz reviews In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, homosexuality, hypocrisy by Frédéric Martel
Almost from the day Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis in 2013, he began denouncing fake devotees, whited sepulchres, and hypocrites at the Vatican. His targets, as Frédéric Martel makes clear, are the high-ranking clergy who vehemently condemn homosexuality while themselves often ...
Sheila Fitzpatrick reviews The Kremlin Letters edited by David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov
Joseph Stalin wanted this wartime correspondence published, and one can see why: he comes off best. As the authors comment, ‘the transcript of the Big Three meetings demonstrates Stalin’s careful mastery of the issues and his superior skill as a diplomatist, regul ...
Russell Blackford reviews Trigger Warnings: Political correctness and the rise of the right by Jeff Sparrow
Whatever benefits it has brought, aggressive globalisation has also dislocated industries, wrecked communities, and fostered social alienation. Large numbers of working-class, blue-collar, and rural voters (these categories overlap) feel abandoned, anxious, and economically insecure, even when they have ...
'Forced marriage: MAFS and reality television’s chamber of horrors' by Alecia Simmonds
Perched on the precipice of the Blue Mountains, Leura is both quiet and wild, a place of misty romance, sylvan charm, and middle-class entitlement. I am here because some friends have offered me their house as a writing retreat for ten days so that I can pen a chapter on the history of marriage (1788 to marriage equality) for ...
