Stuart Simpson is a financial analyst and journalist with a particular interest in development issues and is the convenor IoI’s Emerging Economies Forum. Stuart writes on the economies of developing countries and international development for spiked, Novo and Die Welt.

The politics of development

Stuart Simpson reviews two books that made a splash last year, in a retrospective of the debate they provoked over free trade versus state-led development, and argues that far from being the exclusive terrain of experts, the issue of economic growth is one to be considered by society as a whole.

The Story of Lucy Gault - (Man Booker Prize 2002, SHORTLISTED)

The Gaults are a rich Protestant family, whose position in rural Cork was already on the decline before the events of 1921 put an end to their world for good and forced them into exile. Lucy Gault is a nine-year-old child who understands only that she must leave the one home she has ever known.

The Autograph Man

Alex Li-Tandem, the Autograph Man, is one of those romanticised losers you often encounter in novels. His self-absorbed, haphazard lifestyle, complete with adolescent job, is endured by his friends, who all, through oversights or mistakes on Alex’s part, are made in some way to suffer for it.