Reading in This Moment: Five Books for March 2025

Here’s a selection which this month leans heavily on politics and non-fiction. At a time when it seems there’s little about which to feel hopeful, there remains a lot for us to consider.

BLACK UTOPIANS: VISIONS OF HOPE AND RESISTANCE IN AMERICA, Aaron Robertson

Chatto & Windus, pp. 400

Black Utopians is the first full-length book by translator, editor, and journalist Aaron Robertson, and begins with the author’s memories of visiting his grandparents’ farm in rural Tennessee, in a community called Promise Land. 

Interspersed with letters from his father, who was recently released from prison, it tells the story of different Black utopian experiments in American history—most prominently, the experience of Black Christian Nationalism, a social reform movement established in Detroit by the Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., which combined an Afrocentric brand of Christianity with a radical social agenda and which at one point went on to establish Beulah Land, the largest Black-owned farm in the whole country. By equal measures, learned and touching, it is highly recommended.

THE WORLD AFTER GAZA, Pankaj Mishra

Fern Press, pp. 306

Mishra is the author of two of my favourite skewerings of Western political pieties: Age of Anger (2017), which tries to explain the root causes of our current age of extremes, and Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race & Empire, which similarly reveals the double standards and hollowness of much Western commentariat.

Based on a lecture he was prevented from delivering at the Barbican in February 2024—The World After Gaza isn’t afraid to take on one of the most pressing and divisive of contemporary subjects. Rather than a polemic, however, it represents Mishra’s attempt to grapple with a complex history and, as such, is testament to his ability as an essayist who is always moved by a sincere, principled humanism, unafraid to interrogate easy dichotomies, especially when it would be easier to remain quiet. 

DENGUE BOY, Michel Nieva

Serpent’s Tail, pp. 224

Set in 2272, when rising temperatures have melted the ice caps and made everywhere but the southern edges of the Argentinean pampas uninhabitable, Dengue Boy – the ungodly offspring of man and mosquito, around whom the story is centred – could be the most out-there cli-fi novel you will read in a while.

It mixes the body horror made fashionable by the likes of David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard with the cyberpunk sensibility of Philip K. Dick, but then bathes the whole thing in a distinctively Argentinian imagery (hence the term “gauchopunk”, which is used to describe this mode of writing). One for those into satires of capitalism and its most destructive features, and Nieva—whose non-fiction also explores the nefarious consequences of technology—is definitely an author to watch. 

Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery.

THE SECRET PAINTER, Joe Tucker

Canongate Books, pp. 224

The Secret Painter tells the story of the author’s uncle, Eric Tucker—an ‘outsider painter’ who since his death, and thanks to the author’s own efforts in making his secret work known, has enjoyed a renaissance as the latest reincarnation of L.S. Lowry. 

It is an intimate portrait—by turn comical and melancholic—of a unique personality with a strange lifestyle, one worth remembering as much as his dream-like pictures of working-class Warrington. At times, it reminded me of Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric or Richard Billingham’s photobook Ray’s a Laugh, but these are perhaps slightly misleading comparisons to memoir that it is most of all about the right to one’s interiority and art as an escape. 

WORLD BUILDERS: TECHNOLOGY & THE NEW GEOPOLITICS, Bruno Maçães 

Cambridge University Press, pp. 274

Week-in, week-out we are confronted with yet another technological innovation by some obscure company that threatens to remake the world. Nevermind that often—after an initial splash—a large chunk of these innovations, AI-related or not, seem to sink into oblivion, the general direction is towards a world whose rules are outside most people’s understanding, let alone control.

Premised on the fascinating idea that tech’s goal is not to win the game but own the playing field—World Builders is required reading for everyone living with the impression that this is now a technocrats’ world, in which everyone else is forced to live with diminishing returns. 

Bartolomeo Sala is a writer and reader based in London. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Vittles, and The Brooklyn Rail. Read more of Bart’s writing for Something Curated here.

Header image courtesy of Serpent’s Tail.