| Russians Among Us by Gordon Corera review – spies in plain sight |
[17 Mar 2020|07:00am] |
|
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/17/russians-among-us-sleeper-cells-ghost-stories-hunt-putins-agents-gordon-corera-review The BBC security editor’s account of Russian spying methods in the US, and the FBI’s efforts to foil them, is engrossing In June 2010, Vladimir Putin’s spies broke into the Guardian’s Moscow office. This was a regular thing. Whenever I wrote a story that displeased the Kremlin, the FSB spy agency paid a nocturnal visit. On this occasion, the goons removed the office phone from its cradle and laid it demonstratively on the table. Apparently, they didn’t like my coverage of big news from America. That week, the FBI had exposed a ring of deep-cover Russian sleeper agents. The undercover spies had been living in Boston, New York and Washington, in leafy suburban homes. Their task was to ferret out information from US officials and thinktanks. The agents had fake American names. Some had been there for decades, sent at the end of the cold war on a lonely mission, like satellites blasted into space. Continue reading...
|
|
| Poetry book of the month: Loss by David Harsent – review |
[17 Mar 2020|09:00am] |
|
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/17/loss-david-harsent-review-poetry-book-month A firm virtuosity and sense of estrangement drives this challenging new collectionThis is a long watch of a poem, a tormented vigil. You want to ask, “Who’s there?” – a question you might, like the guard in Hamlet’s opening scene, call out in the dark. If loss is the subject, who is the loser? And what – or who – has been lost? These questions are not easily answered. This is the latest volume in an extraordinarily rich period for David Harsent. In 2011, in Night, he made darkness visible. Fire Songs (2014) and Salt (2017) flared into apocalyptic view soon after. The subtitle of Loss is “white nights”, but do not expect any atoning dawns. The form of the new volume is painstaking: stretches of italics describe a figure looking through a window, writing on misty glass. He is a “man in waiting”. Sonnets alternate with trochaics and lead back to the frightening consciousness from which this fragmented narrative poem comes. Continue reading...
|
|
| Ali Cobby Eckermann on winning the world's richest writing prize: 'It's taken time to adjust' |
[17 Mar 2020|04:30pm] |
|
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/18/ali-cobby-eckermann-on-winning-the-worlds-richest-writing-prize-its-taken-time-to-adjust Poet lived in a caravan when she heard she had won $215,000. Ahead of this year’s Windham Campbell, she reflects on what that recognition can bring Ali Cobby Eckermann had $47 in the bank and was living in a caravan when she found out, in March 2017, that she’d won the world’s richest literary prize, the Windham Campbell. The prize is a coup for any writer. Administered by Yale University, judged anonymously and not open to submissions (it comes as a shock to all who are selected, not least one who found it in her junk mail), it was worth some A$215,000 a head when Eckermann learned she was one of eight winning writers. Continue reading...
|
|