TheftAnd What I did to them was terrible, but you have to understand the context. This was London, 2016 . . . Bohemia is history. Paul has awoken to the fact that he will always be better known for reviewing haircuts than for his literary journalism. He is about to be kicked out of his cheap flat in east London and his sister has gone missing after an argument about what to do with the house where they grew up. Now that their mother is dead this is the

Mehdi Charef: continuing excerpt from Alexina’s House

his fellow pupils’ cruelty and the mysterious but forbidden attractions of sex into an imagined world centred on horse-racing and played out in the dusty backyard of his home

Sadiq al-Saygh

Damsi Figueroa

Olesia Nikolaeva

but rather when and how violent a form will it take

New Hampshire in 1968

David Hare

The poems in The Blue Guitar conjure all at once both the pathos of the individual human situation and all the echoes of the wider world beyond

Featuring: Dannie Abse

the book includes translated poems and prayers from the Roma themselves

The Hard Word Box is an inventive and compassionate meditation on the things that will be lost