Published by Virago / Hachette, 1938, 432 pages. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” That one sentence is so evocative of this book, partly thanks to the 1940 Hitchcock film with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. There is something haunting about Rebecca—both the book and the title character. Rebecca is narrated by …
Month: May 2021
Wife of the Gods: Kwei Quartey
Published by Random House, 2009, 319 pages. Set in Ghana, this is the first in a series featuring Detective Inspector Darko Dawson. Gladys Mensah is found dead in the forest near Ketanu. Her body, seemingly untouched, is discovered by Efia, a trokosi or a “wife of the gods”. In reality, Efia is one of the …
Fly Already: Etgar Keret
Translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander, Jessica Cohen, Miriam Shlesinger and Yardenne GreenspanPublished by Riverhead Books, 2019, 209 pages. Original version published in 2018. A child encourages a man to jump off the top of a building, believing that the man is a superhero and will fly. A man keeps the compacted wreck …
Inspired by Mexico: An Interview with Kat de Moor
Photo: Lucía Brándulas Kat de Moor is a writer, who has just published her first two books, Anatomía de una entrega (translated into English by Robin Myers as Chronicle of a Longing) and Querido Miércoles. Kat was born in Belgium where she studied translation and interpretation. Fluent in English, French, Spanish and Dutch (Flemish), she …
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Feminine Ingenuity—How Women Inventors Changed America: Anne L. Macdonald
Published by Ballantine Books, 1992, 415 pages. “Although women have invented since the beginning of time, it seems as if full recognition of their role has been painfully slow.” When you think of inventors, who do you think of? Usually it is men like Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and Giovanni Marconi. Seeing that women …
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The New Wilderness: Diane Cook
Published by Oneworld Publications, 2020, 416 pages. This book is set in a dystopian future in the United States at a time when all the natural resources have been used up by humans. Cities are polluted, the air is almost unbreathable, and children are dying as a result. One of these sick children is Beatrice’s …
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