Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, published by Grove Press, 2023, 320 pages.The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, published by Hamish Hamilton, 2023, 645 pages. Review by Usha Raman The scariest dystopian novels are those that seem to be set on the inside edge of our times. Anyone who reads the daily news (or worse, watches …
Month: April 2024
Black River: Nilanjana Roy
Published by Pushkin Vertigo, 2022, 350 pages. The best crime fiction is more than just a whodunnit—it shines a light on the darker side of society. This is true of Nilanjana Roy’s Black River: it is dark, heart-breaking and ultimately redemptive. Munia is a little girl who lives with her father Chand, a farmer, in …
The Last Brother: Nathacha Appanah
Translated from French by Geoffrey StrachanPublished by Maclehose Press, 2010, 201 pages. Original version published in 2007. This is a story narrated by Raj, an old man looking back at a crucial period in his childhood, a time that changed his life forever. Raj grows up in Mapou, a village in the north of Mauritius, …
Demon Copperhead: Barbara Kingsolver
Published by Faber / HarperCollins, 2022, 548 pages. “My thinking here is to put everything in the order of how it happened, give or take certain intervals of a young man skunked out of his skull box, some dots duly connected. But damn. A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing. …
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