Skinwalkers: Tony Hillerman

Published by HarperCollins, 1986, 299 pages Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is sleeping in his trailer when he is woken by his neighbour, a feral cat, who comes in through the cat flap in the door. The cat comes into his trailer only when something scares it. Chee gets out of bed …

Continue reading Skinwalkers: Tony Hillerman

Espejo Roto: Mercè Rodoreda

Translated from Catalan into Spanish by Pere GimferrerPublished by Austral, 2002, 413 pages. Original version published in 1975. Published in English as Broken Mirror, translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer, University of Nebraska Press, 2006. The book opens with a visit to a jeweller. Teresa Goday—the beautiful daughter of a fishmonger—is at the jeweller’s shop with …

Continue reading Espejo Roto: Mercè Rodoreda

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeanette Winterson

Published by Vintage / Jonathan Cape, 2011, 230 pages When she was 25, Jeanette Winterson wrote Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fictionalized account of growing up as an adopted child in a Pentecostal community and coming out as a lesbian. This book, written when she was 50, tells the same story, but this …

Continue reading Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeanette Winterson

The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)

Published by William Collins, 2015, 304 pages This is an extraordinary story about a young North Korean woman who managed to get out of the country. Lee Hyeon-seo was born in Hyesan, a North Korean town near the Chinese border. Her father was in the military, and the family was comfortably off, partly because her …

Continue reading The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)