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All Involved, Ryan Gattis’s latest novel, is one of the most eagerly anticipated books of 2015. It is set in Los Angeles and begins on 29 April 1992, the day that a jury acquitted three LAPD officers of using excessive force in the arrest of a black man, Rodney King. As the novel’s glossary helpfully...

Just possibly readers of Socialist Review may not be acquainted with the Kardashians and so may also be unaware that one of the show’s participants, 1976 Olympic gold decathlete Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn, has recently come out as transgender. Millions have watched interviews and read articles about her transition and social media has been buzzing....

Jazz is a mercurial form of music. Separated from the mainstream by the stamp of “abstract obscurity”, it remains constantly changing and shifting. Change is generated from the music’s roots in African-American life and culture. It lives and breathes in cities and communities, so it moves alongside all our social lives, loves and struggles. Jazz...

This new series on Virginia Woolf is perhaps the most radical, and truthful, on-screen account of her life to date. Refreshingly, the programme’s director, Simon Kaijser, does not portray Woolf merely as a writer plagued by mental health problems, but instead situates her within her own historical and social context. This allows us to appreciate...

Documentary The Salt of the Earth introduces the career of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Born in 1944, he initially trained as an economist and this “equipped him with a…knowledge of…what was driving the world”. He enthusiastically used a camera his wife Lelia bought and abandoned his career in economics to become a photographer. This was...

Dear White People comes out at a time when the issue of institutional racism in the US has exploded into the open. A wave of protest has forced the mainstream press to acknowledge that racism hasn’t gone away. The film — a broad comedy — opens with the breaking news of a race riot erupting...

This documentary will challenge everything anyone thought they knew about Amy Winehouse. The tragic death of the English soul and jazz singer at the age of 27 in 2011 ended a talent that had brought us the five Grammy Award winning album Back to Black and powerful songs such as 2008’s “Rehab”. Director Asif Kapadia,...

It is impossible to separate Barbara Hepworth’s work from its method. Although she was far from the first artist to choose carving over other methods of sculpture, it remained a less popular and prestige method, and her choice remains significant. Carving a sculpture begins with something pre-existing—the wood or stone it is carved from —...

This is in so many ways a remarkable and important play. It is after all a world premiere of a major play, staged to mark the centenary of Arthur Miller, one of the great playwrights of the last century. It is also Miller’s most directly political script from his early career. Miller and Elia Kazan...

In The Deeper Genome John Parrington argues that understanding the information coded in our genes is merely the start of understanding what makes us human. This goes against the prevailing view in biology, that human nature can be understood simply by mapping out what is in our DNA. Although there are many popular science books...

Tom Wall’s debut novel tells the story of a young man, Bill Rowe, who refuses to serve in the Second World War and is imprisoned for his conscientious objection. The narrative moves back and forth between his memories and his life in prison, interspersed with perspectives from other characters. Bill was born at the end...

The curator used to be a venerable character, caring for his cabinet of curiosities. From the mid-1990s the verb “to curate” came into common usage, and since then we have lived in what David Balzer likes to call “the curationist moment”, which he believes to be the end of the avant garde. Curationism is a...