Breaking point
ONE DAY THE CHILDREN AND I came home to see Hamad sitting in front of the TV. ‘Why’re you home early?’ Haris asked. ‘To spend time with you,’ Hamad said, patting his lap so Haris could go and sit with him. He only had to look at me in silence and I understood what had...
Rachel Heng: Forever people
Rachel Heng’s remarkable debut novel Suicide Club imagines a disturbing not-so-distant New York in which death is put on hold for those with wealth and power and the determination to cling on, while the majority are left gawping at the gates of immortality. Lea is a 100-year-old ‘lifer’ with a high-powered job, whose trust in...
Freedom from democracy
The electoral process has often been compared to a marketplace in which ideas are sold by parties to voters who make their consumption choices in the voting booth. In his compelling study of American democracy, Golden Rule (1995), US political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that we need ‘a different account of political systems in which...
