“India is a status-quo power: it wants nothing that Pakistan has. Pakistan’s rulers, however, are obsessed with Kashmir, which they have repeatedly tried and failed to wrest from India through war and militancy, and with a desire to “cut India down to size” by bleeding it through terrorism. What needs to happen is for a new political culture to prevail in Pakistan, one that privileges peace, dialogue, co-operation, tourism and trade instead of resentment, bigotry, militarism, intolerance and violence.”

Reflecting on DEAF SENTENCE, the reader can hear the echoes of awful laughter — that silent cacchination encountered everywhere in Beckett’s writing — which characterizes our present lot, with its extended, often forcibly prolonged, old age. Lodge’s transparent prose plays out in a sophisticated informal, everyday voice; his is artful writing that succeeds in that most difficult literary genre, Comedy.

Yet it is no accident that Aleksandar begins with an account of death, nor is it an accident that he wishes himself a magician, able to wave a wand and make things okay again. For tucked in the lines of his narrative we hear ominous rumblings, like shellfire in the distance. Communism is discredited, nationalist sentiment is on the rise.

“But after watching environmentalists blatantly engage in greenwashing for their corporate sponsors, I can tell you that once a group takes money from a corporation and comes to rely on the continued flow of those dollars to run programs and pay salaries, it loses its ability to be a critic and a watchdog. One high-ranking environmentalist once told me he shies away from seeking corporate funds because corporate executives ‘tend to want to buy you up first and talk about conservation later.’ I think that is largely the norm.”

Shakur seems lost in a prison-induced dreamland where people can blow away countless others with impunity, cause the deaths of innocent bystanders, deal drugs, break any law they want then get arrested only to have all of the charges magically disappear. Not content with this far-fetched fantasy, the author then has Lapeace getting married barefoot and immersed in the natural world as though none of the murderous mayhem ever happened. Bad cops and snitches are killed. All is right with the world in Shakurland.

“Once, as an assistant coach at Cal, he knocked a guy out who flipped him the bird when out driving with his family. Bill got in his last known public fist fight at the age of 65. ‘Genius’ or not, he was not someone to be trifled with.”

Had Sitting Bull and his war chiefs reacted in the customary skirmishing style of Plains Indian warfare, the outcome would have been very different. But the Sioux and Cheyennes, fighting with their backs to the wall against the encroaching tide of white civilization, opted for a pitched battle and almost from the outset, Custer’s tactical plan went terribly wrong.

Of course, the reason the affable Dubus was feeding strippers $20 from his writing fellowship becomes a little clearer when one reads the book – the tale of an exotic dancer in Florida whose life intersects with one of the hijackers of 9/11.

But for now, there is only one book and it’s a book that’s all about shouting loudly and proudly that it’s great to be a Jew. The idea for her book came about following an article she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2005. “I was writing a feature about how cool it is to be a Jew in San Francisco and I profiled local ‘Heebsters’ as I now call them,” she says.

The West would exacerbate rather than ease this problem if it brought Georgia into NATO. Nor should we try to bring Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine is now independent and recognized by the world as such, but for most of its history its relationship with Russia has been, to say the least, very close; Kiev was the capital of the first Russian state. One assumes the Europeans will continue to prevent either Georgia or Ukraine from joining NATO; but this has not stopped George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and John McCain from continuing to push the idea.