Fables tend to convey a moral, often anodyne, sometimes downright objectionable. Enlightened writers have seen that children need fables with a ring of social truth, not sanctimonious ones that avoid confronting unpleasant realities. Sean Sheehan   The libertarian William Godwin (1756-1836) took to writing under an assumed name because of […]

 Maria Fouillette, daughter of a butcher in a French town close to the border with Switzerland, was the mother of two children. Her husband Roger became leader of an anti-Nazi resistance group until he was arrested in 1943.   Sean Sheehan   Roger was brought, shackled and bruised, to his […]

Mari Katayama, born in 1987 in Japan, is an artist of the body; her own to be exact. She celebrates the life of body and spirit in photographic self-portraits and the embroidering of objects that relate to her body.   Sean Sheehan   Exhibitions of her work have been seen […]

The bureaucratic impersonality of ‘H8’ as the name for a refugee shelter sums up the anonymity of the place and the state of nothingness that its residents are reduced to.   Sean Sheehan   When it finally closed at the end of 2018, H8 had been in operation for more […]

You can almost feel sorry for male Korean writers, struggling to get noticed in the world of ‘hanguk munhak’ (Korean literature) where female writers now dominate.   Sean Sheehan   Such a turnabout has its roots in the blistering pace of social and economic developments that has convulsed South Korea […]