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Edward Said Memorial Concert As a tribute to the life and work of Edward Said, the London Review of Books has invited the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under their conductor Daniel Barenboim to give a concert at the Barbican Hall in London on August 4th. The Orchestra was set up by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim with the aim of giving young Arabs and Israelis the chance to work and perform together and to learn from some of the world’s best orchestral musicians. Their concert in London will be the high point of their summer tour this year. For more information and to book tickets, click here
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From the current issue

Vol. 26 No. 11 :: 3 June 2004

Stand-Off in Taiwan
Perry Anderson on Greens v. Blues in the South China Sea

"Whatever the short-term eventualities, the long-term prospects of China ever accepting a breakaway of Taiwan seem small. From the standpoint of the nation-state, for a former province without ethnic difference from the majority population to attempt independence is secession. So far, no nation-state has ever permitted this. Freely to accept the independence of Taiwan would, in the eyes of the central government, be to invite a dynamic of disintegration along Yugoslav lines." [ read more . . . ]

Jasmines in the Hallway
Michael Wood: García Márquez tells his story

Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez trans. Edith Grossman

"In an aside on interviews, García Márquez says that he doesn't believe in their usefulness, and that he considers the many interviews he has given as belonging to his 'works of fiction'. This book is perhaps best described as a long interview with himself, but the idea of fantasy gives too much away . . . We are witnessing a triumph of performance, and this is what living to tell the tale means: that what should have been said is part of life too, and there is a real poverty in our forgetting or denying this." [ read more . . . ]

Disgrace under Pressure
Andrew O'Hagan reads some lad mags

"The British lad magazine is not about men at all or about the business of being a grown-up person; it's fuelled by a childish notion of hedonism - pills, thrills and bellyaches - which sees politics as a mug's game and wives as a curse. They may be right about that, but if so they are right in a fairly boring way: no man older than 21 wants to be told they're a failure unless they live like George Best." [ read more . . . ]

Before Rafah
Yitzhak Laor on Israeli militarism

"José Saramago, visiting Israel in March 2002, before the invasion in which Israel reoccupied the territories, said that Israel had two problems. The first, he said, is that the settlements need the army. Everyone agreed. The second is that the army needs the settlements. Nobody agreed. Nobody even listened. Yet General Ya'alon knows that without the settlements he would have no excuse for patrolling the Gaza strip. Do Israelis understand the military's motives? No. Many Israelis, probably the majority, would gladly turn their backs on the settlers. Not on the military, though." [ read more . . . ]

Plus

On the way to Maidenhead
Peter Campbell: Deep holes and narrow tracks at Paddington

Short Cuts
Thomas Jones on the life expectancy of a Roman emperor

Letters from  Lewis Harvey,  Jim Harper,  Anthony Fenton,  Timothy Williams,  Virginia Tilley,  Bas Sprakes,  Joanna Kavenna,  Eoin Dillon

Table of Contents