Eight-years passed between the publication of Wole Soyinka’s debut novel, The Interpreters (1965), and his second, Season of Anomy (1973). A lot happened in the interim.
The Nest is a peculiar animal, hard to nail down, parts family drama and social satire, but with a creepy sense of suspense rippling under the surface that threatens to bust the plot wide open.
We’ve all experienced the “fast food film” – enjoyable while we watch it, but realise afterwards it was an empty thrill with little nutritional value. Much rarer is the film that can only be truly appreciated once the credits roll. Black Bear, with its segmented presentation and recurring themes, is one such film. Risky, baffling, and more than the sum of its parts.
“The crocus of hope is, er, poking through the frost.” When he uttered that dodgy metaphor back in February, Boris Johnson probably didn’t predict that it would become the opening number of the third edition of Living Newspaper, the Royal Court’s anarchic, hyper-current series of new writing.
Hot on the heels of her 2019 triumph Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma’s fifth feature continues a perfect track record; this is yet another gorgeous and perceptive film, told from a determinedly female perspective but with a wisdom that is all-embracing.
This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour, has written a modern-day odyssey, with a return that is ambiguously hopeful. Grey Bees follows a year in the life of Sergey Sergeyich, a retired and lonely beekeeper, keeping the fire burning with his sole neighbour, Pashka, in Little Starhorodivka, a village that sits uneasily inbetween two sides of an entrenched war.
Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already have a tinge of sepia about them.