Published by Viking / Penguin, 1997, 352 pages. Jonathan Coe’s novel about obsession, love, sleep and dreams follows a group of students, moving between their lives as students and 12 years later. We are told in the beginning that the odd-numbered chapters are set in 1983-84 and the even-numbered ones in 1996. But although it …
Month: August 2017
Terra Australis: Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia—Matthew Flinders, ed. Tim Flannery
Published by Text Publishing / Non Basic Stock Line, 2000, 312 pages. I first heard of Matthew Flinders in July 2014 when a friend, Heather Wicks, told me that she was going to London for the unveiling of his statue. Flinders was her fourth great-uncle, who had been the first European to sail around Australia. …
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”: New Readings 50 Years After?
Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.Published by Penguin / Perennial, 1970, 432 pages. Original version published in 1967.Review by Sergio Sandoval Fonseca This year bibliophiles around the world celebrate 50 years of book life for “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967), a novel that pioneered a new genre, gave its author, García Márquez “Gabo”, the …
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Deep South—Four Seasons on Back Roads: Paul Theroux
Published by Eamon Dolan / Mariner Books, 2015, 464 pages. Like Paul Theroux, travellers often go in search of adventure in other countries before exploring their own. Having travelled to remote corners throughout the world, he sets out to discover a part of his own country—the United States—that he knows mostly through its fiction. The …
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