TheDrouth

25th October 2019

‘The sense of helplessness is more of a choice than a reality, in my opinion’ – James Kelman in dialogue with Noam Chomsky

James Kelman: As in the UK there are many people in the United States who are ashamed and outraged by the actions of their government; some repudiate these actions, try to work against them. There is a wider sense of helplessness...
25th October 2019

James Kelman Margarined : Class, Language and the Avoidance of Butter – By Simon Kövesi

Ian Rankin is a rare novelist in admitting that his decision over what sort of fiction he would write was predicated upon a desire for paternal approval...
25th October 2019

‘James Kelman, the Public and Pubic Wigs: By Simon Kövesi

Kelman’s reading was lively, entrancing at times, and the writer was pretty much at his performing best. In questions he was voluble, but as awkward as ever, maintaining his line over language, class and marginalisation, even in this, one of the most crassly populist, conservative of events on the literary calendar…
25th October 2019

James Kelman

James Kelman’s politics are difficult. They make difficulties for his readers. They make difficulties for authorities, producers, editors, publishers, and broadcasters. They make difficulties for the writer himself...
10th October 2019

‘We’re just big bullies…’ Gregory Burke’s Black Watch By David Archibald

A typical definition of the concept ‘Artistic License’ would outline the notion that the artist may be perceived as having freedom to distort some aspect of their subject in order to bring attention to, criticise, or satirize it...
1st October 2019

Rupali Patil

Rupali Patil is a member of Clark House Initiative, Bombay. She re-arranges visuals that critique political oversight and corruption...
16th November 2016

Kamala Khan, the Pakistani-American – a new direction for the typical main-stream American superhero?

In a timely piece, Nyla Ahmed writes in praise of Ms Marvel, the first major Muslim-American superhero. From The Drouth issue 56:
16th November 2015

TERRITORY AND TEMPTATION by Goenawan Mohamad

From – Issue 53 – Territory I come from an expansive archipelago in South East Asia, where the notion of territory is traditionally elusive. A historian once wrote that before […]
12th September 2015

The anti-Imperialist’s Guide to Inaction in Syria By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

The Arab revolutions that started in the winter of 2010 have wreaked havoc with political certainties. At the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” last year, the British-Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali lamented […]