Translated from Estonian by Adam CullenPublished by Pushkin Press / Peter Owen Publishers, 2015, 364 pages. Original version published in 2010. Tallinn, 1409. A knight is beheaded and the murderer walks away, leaving no trace. To put the story into context: sea traffic between Estonia, Germany and Scandinavia was at an unprecedented level. This was …
Continue reading The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church: Indrek Hargla
Published by Riverhead Books / Centre Point Pub, 2021, 384 pages. Published in the US as Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes. “Our stories guide and protect us. Without their lessons, warnings, and triumphs to root us to the past, we float aimlessly, taken by whatever opportunistic forces are quickest to grab, mold, and exploit.” Albert …
Continue reading Concepcion—Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate: Albert Samaha
Published by Jonathan Cape London / Random House, 2025, 254 pages This is Salman Rushdie’s latest book, a collection of three longish stories bookended by two short ones. Given the attack on him that almost killed him and the fact that he is now 78, it is not surprising that many of the stories deal …
Published by Granta Books / W.W. Norton & Company, 2025, 368 pages “The only way to really remember is to forget everything and let time fill the story up. To reach it through a different doorway. Things have to inhabit the living or else disappear from the world and cease to exist. If things survive …
Photo: Adrian Pope Rosemary J. Brown is a journalist and author based in London. Her book, Moving Mountains: Intrepid Women Climbers and the Peaks Named in Their Honour, has just been published. Her first book was Following Nellie Bly: Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World (2021). Rosemary is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, …
Continue reading Reaching Summits: An Interview with Rosemary J. Brown
Translated from Portuguese by Helen LanePublished by Picador / Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, 663 pages. Original version published in 1984. This multigenerational story set mostly in Brazil is centred around Madruga, a Galician who leaves Spain in the early 20th century for the new world in the hope of making his fortune. When the book …
Published by Vintage, 2022, 482 pagesReview by Usha Raman and Suroor Alikhan This is the story of a friendship—one that survives betrayals and tragedies. Two 11-year-olds meet in a paediatric hospital. Sam Masur is there after a horrific accident has smashed his foot, leaving him traumatized and refusing to speak. Sadie Green is there because …
Continue reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Gabrielle Zevin
Published by Zaffre, 2023, 280 pages Fiji, 1914. Sergeant Akal Singh, an Indian Sikh, has been sent to Fiji after a humiliating incident in Hong Kong, where he was serving. All he wants to do is crack an important case to prove himself, so his superiors can send him back to Hong Kong. When his …
Translated from French by Walter J. CobbPublished by Penguin, 1964 (this translation), 501 pages. Original version published in 1831. What makes a monster? Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame, is physically deformed: he has a humpback, a protrusion on his chest, and only one eye because the other is covered by a wart. As …
Published by Hutchinson Heinemann / Penguin, 2024, 358 pages “The story of a war can only be fully and truly told by both the living and the dead.”—Igbo proverb Kunle is nine years old when he sends Tunde, his younger brother, out of the house, so that he can be alone with Nkechi. Tunde runs …
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