www.prospect-magazine.co.uk

40 Ambitious failure
ROBERT ALTER

Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, has its moments. But its satire of the academy is laboured and its imitation of EM Forster unsubtle.

arts&books
68 King Google
ANDREW BROWN

SPECIAL REPORT

50 Can Hillary win in 2008?
CARL M CANNON

Google’s clever advertising model will kill the newspapers. But it isn’t always the best search engine.

Conventional wisdom says Hillary Clinton is too polarising a figure to take the White House in 2008. Conventional wisdom is wrong.

70 Africa’s moderate extremist
TOM DE CASTELLA

For a moderate, Thabo Mbeki has taken some very odd policy positions.

COLUMNS

COLUMNS

8 These islands
PAUL BARKER

61 Widescreen
MARK COUSINS

Welcome to the fun-box.

The best kiddie flicks.

20 Letter from Kashmir
SIMON LONG

62 Private view
BEN LEWIS

India and Pakistan are still squabbling.

FICTION

What should be called ephemeralism.

56 True short story 44 Washington watch
TUMBLER ALI SMITH

72 Cultural tourist
The battle for “Paki.” Plus Under the radar.

The Republican elite’s weird scribbles.

Without the cancer drug Herceptin, this is how short the story of a life might be.

53 Out of Africa
RICHARD DOWDEN

77 Smallscreen
DAVID HERMAN

Africa has big political storms ahead.

REVIEWS

Broccoli television. FORTHCOMING Dennis Ross on the prospects for peace in the middle east Catherine Fieschi on symbolic legislation Denis MacShane objects to Christopher Meyer’s memoirs
THE NEXT ISSUE OF PROSPECT IS PUBLISHED ON 22ND DECEMBER POLITICAL PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR
Political Studies Association

64 Watching them die 54 Brussels diary
MANNEKEN PIS IAN BLACK

A former Manneken Pis triumphs.

80 Notes from underground
DAN KUPER

Robert Fisk is a great war reporter and a partisan chronicler of western abuses in the middle east. But do not expect political insight.

How I became the bigots’ best mate.

65 Auster’s scrapbook
KAMRAN NAZEER

REGULARS

4 Letters 6 News & Curiosities plus Enigmas & puzzles IAN STEWART 13 Numbers game THE CRUNCHER 73 Classifieds 78 The generalist DIDYMUS 79 The list

Paul Auster makes little distinction between fictional and real life stories. His literary world is a scrapbook.

66 Abbado on film
STEPHEN EVERSON

The move from CD to DVD in classical recordings can mean seeing more of the orchestra than we want.

PROSPECT December 2005 3