From Xenobe Purvis to Jeffrey Wasserstrom: new books reviewed in short

New Statesman​

3 days ago

Moveable Feasts by Chris Newens
What do you do when you want to write about food in one of the world's most celebrated gastronomic capitals as an Englishman? You have to go a bit off-piste. As readers spiral inwards from the 20th to the first arrondissements of Paris, Chris Newens navigates the distinct elements of each area with a thread of earnestness and sentimentality. You would be forgiven for expecting that the cuisine that still dominates modern cooking would prevail, but Newens' dedication to representing the undiscovered parts of the city demonstrates the beautiful tapestry that has risen out of multiculturalism.
Most thrilling to the Western eye is his lucid descriptions of unfamiliar wonders – Congolese malangwa, grilled fish typically reserved for 'fêtes', or meen puyabaisse, a fusion of a classic French dish with Sri Lankan flavours. From swingers' clubs to restaurants solidaires (state-funded soup kitchens that offer entrée, plat, dessert and the 'human right' of a French meal, wine), Moveable Feasts is unassuming, full of authenticity and homeliness. It is best described in the first chapter: 'Ce n'est pas un grand cru but… you should have a glass.'
Profile Books, 369pp, £18.99. Buy the book
By Sebastian Page
The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Democracy is under attack, autocracy is on the march, and those who dare to stand in the way will only be crushed. So goes the conventional narrative about the state of the world in this era of democratic decline. But the protagonists in US-based historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom's The Milk Tea Alliance refuse to be cowed by the long odds and seemingly indomitable regimes that confront their demands for freer and more democratic societies. They refuse to 'obey in advance'.
The Milk Tea Alliance is a concise, engaging, and ultimately inspiring portrait of three young activists – Ye Myint Win (AKA Nickey Diamond) in Burma, Agnes Chow in Hong Kong, and Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal in Thailand – and the youth-based protest movements that have swept all three locations in the past decade. They draw inspiration from past dissidents, popular films, such as The Hunger Games, and, most importantly, each other. This does not mean they are destined to prevail in their respective struggles, but their combined stories offer a compelling testament to the power of courage, and the importance of continuing to hope against hope.
Columbia Global Reports, 104pp, £12.99. Buy the book
By Katie Stallard
Monsieur Ozenfant's Academy by Charles Darwent
Amédée Ozenfant (1886-1966) is today a forgotten figure. For three and a half decades from 1936, however, the painter and writer was a key figure in the British art world. When he arrived in London from Paris, he brought with him the tenets of modernism fresh from the fountainhead. Although his ideas were already known through his book Foundations of Modern Art (1931), the opening of the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in Kensington meant that forward-looking artists had access to the French avant-garde without the need to cross the Channel.
Ozenfant, friend and collaborator of Le Corbusier and Fernand Léger – and co-founder of purism (a restrained and very French strain of modern art) that manifested itself in his hands as a crisply architectural form of cubism – has now been resurrected by the estimable Charles Darwent, a sage writer on midcentury art. As well as a diverting account of Ozenfant's life in Paris, London and New York, he includes his own translation of the diary entries he kept during his London sojourn that contain a mixture of picaresque views on the darkening politics of the time and his own life as a cultural emissary.
Art Publishing, 236pp, £25. Buy the book
By Michael Prodger
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
In the picturesque 18th-century village of Little Nettlebed the heat descends on unsuspecting residents, drying up rivers, scorching the grass and bringing with it a series of unprecedented events. Unusual sea creatures wash up on the droughty riverbed of the Thames, crows gather on the roofs of those about to die and five sisters have been seen transforming into dogs. Unsettling? Very. But the haunting narrative of Xenobe Purvis's debut novel is made even more disturbing by the fact that it's based on a real-life case of 'barking' girls in Oxfordshire recorded in the 1700s.
Just below the surface of the narrative lies a penetrating social commentary, thrusting the reader into the minds of the villagers, some of whom would recall the witch trials. How will these small-town, religious people react to something they deem outside of the norm? With a level of neurosis, naturally. As the days get hotter, the patriarchal community leaders, quite literally, pick up their pitchforks. Ultimately, it is the word of the man against five eccentric girls, and through this, we see how little has changed since the 18th century.
Hutchinson Heinemann, 272pp, £16.99. Buy the book
By Zuzanna Lachendro
[See also: David Gentleman's pensées for the novice artist]
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