Light Lifting. By Alexander MacLeod. Jonathan Cape; 224 pages; £15.99. To be published in America in April by Biblioasis; $19.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukA GOOD novel woos its readers, tantalises them with glimpses of flesh and gradually lures them into a world from which they later emerge changed. Short stories, by contrast, rely on instant attraction and immediate gratification. If they are good they leave one hungry for the next encounter. More often, though, they leave the reader slightly jarred, looking for greater fulfilment.Alexander MacLeod does not. His brilliant debut collection, “Light Lifting�, is engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying; each story has the weight of a novel. The young Canadian writer is already winning plaudits in his own country. He can expect acclaim far beyond.These seven stories grip partly because they are...

SEEN from the state’s point of view, multiple citizenship is at best untidy and at worst a menace. Officials would prefer you to be born, live, work, pay taxes, draw benefits and die in the same place, travel on one passport only, and bequeath only one nationality to your offspring. In wartime the state has a unique call on your loyalty—and perhaps your life. Citizenship is the glue keeping individual and state together. Tamper with it, and the relationship comes unstuck.But life is more complicated than that. Loyalty to political entities need not be exclusive: indeed, it often overlaps. Many Jews hold Israeli passports in solidarity with the Jewish state (and as an insurance policy), alongside citizenship of their native country. Teutons may be proud to be simultaneously Bavarian, German and European. Irish citizens can vote in British elections. The old notion of one-man, one-state citizenship looks outdated: more than 200m people now live and work outside the countries in which they were born—but still wish to travel home, or marry or invest there.The wrong response to this is political protectionism, with...

Clean hand

IT IS a proud boast of Singapore that this very small but immensely wealthy city-state is the least corrupt and best place to do business in the world. And a chief reason for that, at least according to the politicians, is that they themselves are by some way the highest-paid elected officials in the world. Why would a minister bother with corruption, so the argument goes, when he can take home S$1.6m ($1.3m) a year for just keeping on the straight and narrow?Maybe. But most Singaporeans feel that their representatives have stretched that argument too far. Anger boiled over during last year’s general election, with many opposition candidates questioning whether it was really necessary for Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, to trouser up to S$3.4m a year (compared with Barack Obama’s $400,000), especially at a time when many Singaporeans were struggling with rising prices. Surely Mr Lee did not need that much to keep him honest? The salary issue helped to push the ruling party’s share of the vote down to its lowest-ever level.After this unprecedented public reversal...

VIKTOR ORBAN, Hungary’s conservative prime minister, seems an unlikely villain. A firebrand dissident in communist times, he had already served one term as a respectable if somewhat populist prime minister before he led his Fidesz party back into power in 2010. Yet with the implementation on January 1st of a new Hungarian constitution, accompanied by a barrage of new fundamental laws, Mr Orban stands accused by his critics at home and by Hungary’s friends abroad of steering his country back in the direction of a new autocracy.Mr Orban’s supporters claim that the need to sort out an economic mess, clean up corruption and eradicate remaining traces of communism justify his radical approach. They maintain that, because Fidesz won the 2010 election with a two-thirds majority, the government has a mandate to push through big constitutional changes, even if some of these appear illiberal and nationalist. Yet democracy is not just about winning elections. Even a two-thirds majority should not entitle Fidesz to grab power over supposedly independent outfits such as the media regulator, the judiciary, the central bank and...

EVEN by the standards of one of the world’s great conspiracy theorists, it was wacky stuff. On hearing the news that Argentina’s Cristina Fernández had become the fifth left-of-centre Latin American leader to be diagnosed with cancer in the past three years, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, himself unlucky enough to be one of them, mused that the United States might have developed technology to “induce cancer� in its political foes. “I don’t want to make any reckless accusation,� Mr Chávez said disingenuously, “but it’s very, very, very strange.�This could be just another piece of self-evident nonsense from Mr Chávez. After all, several of the other stricken leaders have friendly relations with the United States and the health scares have thus far increased the popularity of both Mr Chávez and Ms Fernández: Latin American politics has featured a maudlin streak ever since the early death (yes, from cancer) of Eva Perón. But Mr Chávez may have been putting up a smokescreen. The recent cancer cases offer not just stories of personal suffering but also a striking contrast in the way that the leaders affected have handled the...

Stand down, Frank

FIJI’S military commander and prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, promises that martial law will be lifted on January 7th, and that consultations on a new constitution will begin in February. The announcement from the troubled islands was welcomed by the Commonwealth, of which Fiji is a wayward member, and by Australia, its biggest neighbour. The Commonwealth secretary-general, Kamalesh Sharma, said that lifting public-emergency regulations was “long overdue�, and called for a fresh election. Australia’s prime minister, Julia Gillard, said it was a “first step�, but that democracy had to be restored. Both are right to be cautious.Martial law was first introduced after Mr Bainimarama seized power in December 2006. It was lifted the following May, but then reimposed in September 2007 to head off protests by public-sector unions, traditional chiefs and leaders of the Methodist church. Since April 2009, when the country’s constitution was abrogated, martial law has been a permanent fixture. Mr Bainimarama has ruled by decree, putting in place draconian media and...

THOUGH individual tastes do differ, the market for art suggests that those who have money generally agree on what is best. The recent authentication of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, for example, magically added several zeroes to the value of a work that had not, physically, changed in any way. Nor is this mere affectation. In the world of wine (regarded as an art form by at least some connoisseurs), being told the price of a bottle affects a drinker’s appreciation of the liquid in the glass in ways that can be detected by a brain scanner.It seems, now, that the same phenomenon applies to music. For serious players of stringed instruments the products of three great violin-makers of Cremona, Nicolo Amati, Giuseppe Guarneri and Antonio Stradivari, have ruled the roost since the 17th century. Their sound in the hands of a master is revered. They sell for millions. And no modern imitation, the story goes, comes close. Unfortunately, however, for those experts who think their judgment unclouded by the Cremonese instruments’ reputations, Claudia Fritz of the University of Paris VI and Joseph Curtin, an American...

THOUGH Britain is a small, densely populated island, it costs a lot to get around it. The petrol price stands at £1.34 a litre, just a few pence below its May peak. Grumbles are growing. On November 15th an electronic petition signed by more than 100,000 people prompted a debate in Parliament. MPs passed a motion calling on George Osborne, the chancellor, to scrap plans to put up fuel duty in January in line with inflation.The long-standing anger over prices has flared repeatedly. In 2000 truckers blocked refineries, prompting a run on petrol. Then, unemployment stood at 5% and inflation was low. People feel far more pinched now. Politicians ignore the current fuss at their peril.The price of fuel is controversial because Britain is car mad—three-quarters of miles travelled are by cars and vans—and because a large chunk of pump receipts go directly into government coffers. Taxes on fuel, including VAT, account for 63% of its cost. That is a slightly lower proportion than in Greece or Sweden, but far higher than in America, where raising fuel taxes is nonetheless said to be a “third rail�, deadly to politicians.Aware of petrol’s political potency, in March Mr Osborne cut duty by a penny per litre and delayed a further 3p of rises. He had previously touted the idea of a fuel “stabiliser� to smooth fluctuations in oil prices. He gave up that plan. Instead, he will raise taxes...

A tabloid in its pomp

IT WAS the Fake Sheikh’s finest hour. On November 1st two members of Pakistan’s national cricket team were convicted in a British criminal court of fixing episodes of an international match, against England in 2010, for money. They had been exposed in a sting by the pseudonymous Arab, Mazher Mahmood, a star reporter for the now-defunct tabloid newspaper, the News of the World.Posing as the Indian head of a Singapore-based betting syndicate, Mr Mahmood had filmed a British associate of the players pocketing £150,000 ($240,000) in marked notes in return for a promise to arrange match-fixing. As proof of his influence, he predicted the timing of two illegal deliveries, or “no-balls�, to be delivered by the Pakistanis’ two best bowlers, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, in the forthcoming game. The odds of being able to do this successfully, unaided, were 1.5m to one. Yet the no-balls transpired, with Mr Amir, then 18 years old and one of the sport’s brightest talents, overstepping by a huge distance. Bundles of the notes were later...

Some nets he doesn’t like

IS THE tide turning against shark’s fin soup? Conservationists certainly hope so. On September 22nd in Shanghai WildAid, a charity, launched a campaign to persuade Chinese people to give up eating the delicacy. Celebrity support for the bid was provided by Yao Ming, a Chinese basketball star, and Sir Richard Branson, a British business star. In California, meanwhile, a ban on the sale, trade and possession of sharks’ fins has been passed by the state senate, and awaits only the governor’s signature to become law.The booming Chinese appetite for shark’s fin soup is known to be the driving force behind the depletion of shark species worldwide. Matt Rand, director of Global Shark Conservation at the Pew Environment Group, says that more than 30% of shark species are at risk of extinction. Marine ecosystems depend on the presence of high-level predators to keep other species in check, he says. Yet many Chinese accuse the campaigners of double standards. Why should shark’s fin, an important part of certain Chinese feasts, be banned, they ask? Why not ban...

Kudrin gets his coat

ALEXEI KUDRIN, who was dismissed as Russia’s finance minister on September 26th, often sounded more like an opposition politician than a member of the ruling clan. Two things allowed him to speak up: his professionalism and his close relationship with Vladimir Putin.In the 1990s the two men worked together in St Petersburg. In 1996 Mr Kudrin was catapulted to the Kremlin and helped Mr Putin to move to Moscow. “He is decent and professional,� Mr Putin told journalists in 1999. Mr Kudrin justified this trust. He balanced the budget and channelled oil windfalls into a rainy-day fund, which helped Russia get through the 2008 financial crisis. Mr Putin left Mr Kudrin alone, knowing that his own popularity was dependent on his finance minister’s skills.In 2007 Mr Kudrin showed decency when Sergei Storchak, his deputy, was imprisoned after a power struggle with the security services. Mr Kudrin eventually got him out of jail. But such professionalism was going out of fashion.Earlier this year Mr Kudrin told an economic forum that Russia lives by informal agreements...

IN OPPOSITION, David Cameron was adamant: Chase Farm hospital in Enfield, north London should be spared “reconfiguration�—NHS jargon for merging or closing failing or supernumerary hospitals. He pledged a “bare-knuckle fight� to save it and others. Things look different now. Chase Farm is to be absorbed into another big hospital, its accident and emergency (A&E) service reduced and a maternity ward lost. Others face similar measures: not far away in Ilford, for example, the King George hospital will be closed or shrunk.The recent row over the commissioning of hospital care drowned out another big issue in health-care reform: how many hospitals England really needs. Sir David Nicholson, the NHS’s chief executive, has long argued for a big reduction in their numbers, in part because £20 billion needs to be saved in the health budget by 2014.But thrift is not the only argument. The King’s Fund, a health-care think-tank, believes that services ranging from A&E to neonatal and heart specialisms are best concentrated on fewer sites. The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, and the NHS Confederation, representing hospital managers, agree that cities, in particular, have too many hospitals, with London the most over-endowed.That means weaning the public off the idea that most local hospitals should offer most services—and dealing with worries about...

Correction to this article“THE people of Zambia have spoken and we must all listen,� a defeated President Rupiah Banda intoned on September 23rd. His Movement for Multiparty Democracy had ruled Zambia for the past 20 years. Yet when the opposition leader, Michael Sata, and his Patriotic Front won a pretty fair presidential election by a margin of 43% to 36%, the incumbent bowed out with a good grace. In neighbouring countries and across Africa such fine behaviour is still unusual.But democracy, in one shape or another, is a lot more widely practised than it was. From around 1960, when Africa’s colonies first became independent, until 1991, not a single one of Africa’s 53 countries (now 54, including South Sudan), witnessed any leader or ruling party being peacefully voted out of office, with the noble exception of Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, in 1982. Elsewhere a handful of presidents, such as Tanzania’s late Julius Nyerere, voluntarily stepped down. Since 1991, however, no less than 30 ruling...

Cruel and unusual

ARPUTHAM AMMAL, a pensioner with curly silver hair and a wheezing cough, is an abolitionist. Perched in a gloomy warehouse in Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, as young men bustle over an exhibition against the death penalty, she explains why. “It is not needed. The ultimate victims of the death sentence are the backward, the minorities and the weak.�She has another reason for her opposition: in a few weeks a hangman is due to slip a noose around her son’s neck. Known as Perarivalan, he was convicted with 25 others of killing Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Judges ruled that he supplied a battery for the suicide bomber who blew up the former prime minister. Yet for over a decade he has languished in jail awaiting a response to his plea for mercy. In August President Pratibha Patil rejected the plea, and those of two co-conspirators.The three were to be hanged on September 9th. But a local court issued a further stay, ironically to decide if the years of delay, largely in solitary confinement, were a cause for commutation. Delays are universal in India; 16 similar pleas...

CLUTCHING a glass of distinctly un-Islamic whisky, a retired senior Pakistani official explains at a drinks party in Islamabad, the capital, that his country has no choice but to support the jihadist opposition in Afghanistan. The Indians are throwing money at their own favourites in Afghanistan, he says, and the Russians and Iranians are doing the same. So Pakistan must play the game too. “Except we have no money. All we have are the crazies. So the crazies it is.�Chief among the crazies is the Haqqani network, an Islamist militia with a 30-year history of fighting foreign occupations of Afghanistan. In mid-September the network struck in the heart of Kabul, launching a 20-hour assault on the American embassy and other targets. A week later, the leader of President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to make peace with the insurgents, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in Kabul. The suicide bomber is suspected by some to have been linked to the Haqqanis.Just after this Mike Mullen, chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm� of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence...