On Censorship
By Ai Weiwei
(Thames & Hudson, 88pp, £12.99)
Ai Weiwei’s essay on censorship sees the exiled Chinese artist and film-maker musing on the insidious nature of censorship and its effects on society. He argues successfully that censorship is just as prevalent in the so-called free western nations as in his homeland, where he has frequently had exhibitions cancelled at short notice, had his studio bulldozed and been incarcerated for 81 days by the authorities, events detailed in his 2021 memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.
Censorship in the West, however, is “more covert, more deceptive and more corrosive”, he argues, with thought and speech policed by political, economic, media and social mechanisms, such as how climate change data is “consistently suppressed by governments and profit-driven interest groups”. A succinct and fascinating argument for free speech. John Walshe
Loren Ipsum
By Andrew Gallix
(Dodo Ink, £9.99)
Loren Ipsum is in Paris to write about Adam Wandle – an author lying low in the banlieues. Hardly has she unpacked when her subject becomes unexpectedly topical: the city’s writers are being assassinated and quotes from Wandle are being found on the bodies. A terrorist organisation claims responsibility, but it falls to Loren to uncover who they are, what their agenda is, and how – if at all – Wandle is involved.
What ensues is an utterly original survey of the common ground between writers and terrorists: the desire to wreak havoc on a complacent public, the habitual conflation of the real and the symbolic, and the continuous sense that their work is simply (as Loren Ipsum implies) a place holder for something else – probably, for further placeholders. Oscar Mardell
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Helen of Nowhere
By Makenna Goodman
(Fitzcarraldo, £12.99)
Once in a blue moon, a book comes along that seems to read itself, demanding no extra effort beyond the turning of its pages. Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere is one of those books. Goodman’s novel follows a nameless academic who, following the collapse of his career and marriage, is viewing a countryside house, where he hopes to trade “intellectual misery” for genuine affinity with nature.
Helen of Nowhere is entirely composed of the dialogue of its skeletal cast – the academic, his wife, the realtor, the house, its owner – and, while slim, uncanny circumstantial details and formal playfulness result in an obscure yet sustaining work. Goodman’s jabs at the travails of academia are sharp, and the novel’s goal of recovering lost pleasures is amplified by its thrilling metaphysical ambition. Colm McKenna
