by Ian Thomson
Andrew Solomon, the Manhattan-born journalist and cultural commentator, is alert to the differences between tourism and travel…. The distinction has more than neatness in its favour. As a young man, Solomon made his name as a reporter interested in places on the brink of change. “The Winter Palettes”, included here in this giant collection of his travel journalism, Far & Away, reported on Sotheby’s “ground-breaking” auction of avant-garde Soviet art in Moscow in 1988. The article, a bravura performance, waspishly disapproves of capitalist endeavour in glasnost-era Russia…. His superb essay on modern art in post-apartheid South Africa, published in 1994, deftly navigates issues of skin colour and privilege in the townships…. Solomon is admirably quick to empathise with the downtrodden and marginalised.
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