Published by OneWorld, 2014, 688 pages. “If it no go so, it go near so.” “[E]ven though the Singer is the center of the story, it really isn’t his story. Like there’s a version of this story that’s not really about him, but about the people around him, the ones who come and go that …
Continue reading A Brief History of Seven Killings: Marlon James
Photo: bee boys via Shutterstock A decade ago, the first post went up on Talking About Books, announcing its arrival. The first review followed soon after, exactly 10 years ago today.[1] This post is a way of taking stock of the journey and of thanking the people who have been part of it. When I …
Continue reading Looking back at a decade of Talking About Books
Translated from Kazakh and Russian by Zaure Batayeva, Shelley Fairweather-Vega and Sam BreazealePublished by Gaudy Boy, 2022, 267 pages. This collection of women’s stories from Kazakhstan is the first of its kind. The Kazakh word “amanat” has many meanings, as the translators explain in their introduction. It is “a promise entwined with hope for the …
Published by Harper Collins / Minotaur Books, 2021, 383 pages. Bombay, 1892. Bacha and Pilloo, two young women, fall to their deaths from the city’s clocktower. The police conclude that it was suicide. Captain James Agnihotri of the British army is recovering in hospital in Bombay after a skirmish in Karachi with the Pathans, a …
Jacob Ross is a Grenadian novelist, playwright, poet and journalist. He now lives in the UK, where he teaches creative writing. His books include Pynter Bender (2008), which, in 2009, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize, the Society of Authors Best First Novel, and the Caribbean Review of Books "Book of the Year"; …
Continue reading Finding Other Ways of Seeing: An Interview with Jacob Ross
Translated from Spanish by Daniel HahnPublished by Charco Press, 2022, 156 pages. Original version published in 2011. How do you live after you lose everything, when the ideals you devoted your life to are gone, when the people you worked with are dead or no longer around? How do you live in close proximity to …
Published by Harper Perennial, 2008, 452 pages. “[I]n the villages above the canes people did not die. As long as memory lived they did not. They passed. Leaving always something of themselves behind. John Seegal, their grandfather, had passed most of himself over to Birdie, except for the thieving ways, o’course, which came from a …
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