Sunday, June 08, 2008

The Review, reviewed

This week's review has plenty to ponder over. Pankaj Mishra, in his now regular column, raises his bat to 'Joseph O'Neil's beautiful new novel Netherland', set in New York, which 'so skilfully uses cricket's particular morality to dramatise geopolitical as well as interpersonal conflicts'.

Elsewhere Jhumpa Lahiri is accused of failing 'to challenge the inadequacies of this elite America - the latent racism that underpins it - and, as a result, Unaccustomed Earth isn't a truly provocative or innovative American book'. However, the Guardian's editor in the main section lavishes her with praise.

The first volume of Amitav Ghosh's trilogy is set on a ship amidst the Opium Wars of the lat 19th century and discover the uses of a spatula mundani in Tony Horowitz's account of America post-Columbus and pre-Jamestown.

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