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A novel to last all summer

“The brothers Karamazov” is extraordinary. Mini-narratives, encounters and conversations between the characters proliferate like vegetation in a botanist’s rainforest fantasy. They spawn new stories by way of background to another story which is itself an offshoot of what looks to be the main story.   Sean Sheehan   The reader […]

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Fear and superstition in Oaxaca

The historical origins of La Santa Muerte (Saint Death) in Mexico are obscure but the cult, now more popular than ever, has millions of followers. This strikes an unsettling chord with the country’s plague of murderous narco-related violence.   Sean Sheehan   Myriam Lamrani considers this confluence of the spiritual-poetic […]

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Zoogenetics, large-scale production and demand

For hundreds of millions of poor rural households, livestock remain a key asset, often meeting multiple needs, and enabling livelihoods to be built in some of the world’s harshest environments.   Roberto Salomón   The livestock sector is undergoing dramatic changes as large-scale production expands in response to surging demand […]

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A labour of scholarly love

If Herodotus is the ‘father of history’ then surely Strabo (c. 60 BC–c. AD 25), describing the physical past and present of his known world, deserves the same status for geography.   Sean Sheehan   Born more than half a millennium after Herodotus, Strabo documents three continents at a time […]