Welcome to The Ironist
ISSN 2817-7363
The Ironist is dedicated to exploring irony wherever it occurs. We have a range of articles, stories and even book reviews which cover historical and contemporary life and events. We welcome you comments, support and submissions.
The Art Thief
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel : A Book Review This year, 2023, has seen the publication of Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief, a riveting true account of the escapades of Stephane Breitwieser, a native of Alsace, and probably the most prolific art thief in history...
Finding Her Voice
Finding Her Voice Lou-Ellen Lewis was a quiet girl given to reading. She was not shy, but her reflective disposition discouraged her from revealing her inmost thoughts openly in class. Unlike so many of the other girls, enthusiastic and vital as they tended...
The Catholic Club. The first chapter, when Lakshmi first meets Boaz
Chapter 1 India This is the story of my sister Lakshmi. She is two minutes older than I am. The story starts on a chilly morning in early January, and we were high up on the ramparts of the great Merangarh Fort. I will never forget the day. That was the day Lakshmi...
About The Ironist
A Tonic for the Age The Ironist is an open forum to encourage discussion and reflection upon the written word and the world around us to promote critical analysis. Irony, “the recognition of incongruities” (Cleanth Brooks), is a tool that permits differing...
Supreme Irony
It is a supreme irony that the Ontario public school system, at least in its Peel District school board, should fall victim to wokeist activists of the ‘cancel culture’ persuasion, militants unrepresentative of Canadian majority opinion. Recent news reports of a...
A Review of Two Books on the Subject of Book Burning
Richard Ovenden, Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack, (John Murray, 2021) Kenneth Baker, On the Burning of Books: How Flames Fail to Destroy the Written Word, (Unicorn, 2016) The aim of those vandals who burn books in an open forum is arguably to...
Confessions of Zadok the Beast
Yes, I do like to vomit upon the carpet under the piano. Of course it is much harder to clean there than it is to clean vomit off the linoleum in the kitchen. Why else would I do there – if not to make them get on their hands and knees? It is obvious that the...
Play
If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, it makes Jill pretty boring, too. If truth be told, those workaholics Mr. and Mrs. Jack are tedious company, as well. So obsessed has our society become with work, usually paid work, that its antithesis, play, has become...
Such Trifles
The Russian writer, dissident, and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1917-2008) was an outspoken critic of communism in what was then called the Soviet Union, and was imprisoned in the Siberian gulag for eight years for critical comments he...