sarah resnick

May 1, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Helen Oyeyemi |sarah resnick

Helen Oyeyemi’s​ latest novel, Parasol against the Axe, opens with a playful monologue from its narrator, the city of Prague. Prague has recently found its way – ‘who knows how’ – into a WhatsApp group ‘set up as a safe space for sharing complaints about the capital city of Czechia’. ‘Some of the incidents referred to had taken place many years ago,’ it explains.

Jun 7, 2023 | lrb.co.uk | Kate Beaton |sarah resnick

One of​ Kate Beaton’s more famous illustrations features an unlikely protagonist for a cartoon strip: Nikola Tesla. In Hark! A Vagrant, a comic published online between 2007 and 2018, she sketched the handsome inventor on stage, welcoming an audience to a demonstration of his latest invention. Cut to the spectators. Instead of the respectable-looking men we might expect, there are rows of women panting like teenagers at a Harry Styles concert.