Published by John Murray / St. Martin's Press, 2007, 294 pages. “He closed his eyes, like so many other Parisians, during that terrible year of 1942. He had closed his eyes the day of the roundup, when he had seen all those people being driven away, packed on buses, taken God knows where. … My …
Month: August 2019
The Lights of Pointe-Noire: Alain Mabanckou
Translated from French by Helen StevensonPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2015, 280 pages. Original version published in 2014. Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, when he was 22, and didn’t go back for 23 years, not even when his mother died. Refusing to accept her death, he keeps up the myth that she is alive and …
Continue reading The Lights of Pointe-Noire: Alain Mabanckou
Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: Salman Rushdie
Published by Jonathan Cape / Vintage, 2015, 304 pages. “This is the story of a jinnia, a great princess of the jinn…who loved a mortal man long ago, in the twelfth century…and of her many descendants.” This is Salman Rushdie as Scheherazade, narrating events that take place over 1,001 nights. Jinns are creatures of smoke …
Continue reading Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: Salman Rushdie
Flight Behaviour: Barbara Kingsolver
Published by Harper & Collins / Faber & Faber, 2012, 448 pages. Dellarobia Turnbow is heading up to the cabin owned by her family to meet a lover, trying to break out of the suffocating life she lives. But she never gets there. An amazing sight on an overlook on the other side of the …
Talking About Books 