Published by William Collins, 2015, 304 pages This is an extraordinary story about a young North Korean woman who managed to get out of the country. Lee Hyeon-seo was born in Hyesan, a North Korean town near the Chinese border. Her father was in the military, and the family was comfortably off, partly because her …
Continue reading The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)
Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022, 258 pages A story told by several family members, Calling for a Blanket Dance centres around Ever, a man with a Cherokee-Kiowa mother (Turtle) and a Mexican father (Everado). But it is also a story about the Geimausaddles, Ever’s family. Turtle’s mother, Lena Stop, is a Cherokee, …
Published by Bloomsbury, 2025, 273 pages “As I walk through each room, I immediately become immersed in reminiscences of my parents, my brothers, relatives, visitors and attendants, their lives and mine, their stories and the stories of those who lived here before us. Lives from the past can be invoked in each room and through …
Continue reading Telling Me My Stories—Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood: Kunzang Choden
Published by Faber & Faber, 2012, 116 pages This book of poems is a quartet, with the first three poems narrating stories, and the last a collection of poems about everyday life that spans a day. The first—and the longest—poem is Professor Winterthorn’s Journey, about a widowed academic who gets himself an invitation to a …
Published by Liveright, 2018, 320 pages In this book, Seth Kugel takes us back to the thrill of discovery when we travel, which we seem to have lost in this time of information overload. Kugel retreats from our hurried, switched-on way of functioning, where we consult online resources for the perfect restaurant before we go …
Continue reading Rediscovering Travel—A Guide for the Globally Curious: Seth Kugel
Translated from Italian by Howard CurtisPublished by Abacus, 2007, 357 pages. Original version published in 2005. A man is brutally murdered in a shop in Greve, a town near Florence. Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara, head of the Squadra Mobile, is called to investigate. The victim, Stefano Micali, worked at a shop selling religious artefacts. He …
Translated from Assamese by Mitra PhukanPublished by Penguin, 2025, 338 pages. Stories in the original version published over several years. “Certainly, their parents must have given these women a name. Those names were lost in the river of time. What indeed did they have that would allow them to hold their names firmly in their …
Continue reading The Owl, The River and the Valley: Arupa Patangia Kalita
Published by Bantam Press / Random House, 2005, 352 pages “We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure.” A retired couple, Terry and Monica Darlington take their whippet, Jim, and their narrowboat, meant for canals, across the Channel into France. This is a travel book whose …
Continue reading Narrow Dog to Carcassonne: Terry Darlington
Published by Severn House, 2025, 214 pages Most Private Investigator Vish Puri is getting ready to go to London to receive the International Detective of the Year award. He and his wife Rumpi are looking forward to the week-long trip and plan to make a holiday of it. Unfortunately, nothing works out the way Puri …
Continue reading The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck: Tarquin Hall
Krishna Candeth is an Indian writer, poet and filmmaker. His first novel, All Stray Dogs Go To Heaven, was published in 2023. Before going to New York to study filmmaking at Columbia University, he made several documentary films for Indian Television, including a film on the romance of the monsoon in India; one on how …
Continue reading Weaving Stories: An Interview with Krishna Candeth
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