Published by Canongate, 2023, 306 pages. British Malaya, 1921. The writer William Somerset Maugham (referred to in the book as Willie) is staying with his old friend Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley. Willie is going through a difficult time: his writer’s block is compounded by the fact that he has just learned that he …
Author: suroor alikhan
I have always been an avid reader. I read across genres and try and find books by writers from countries around the world. One of the things I love is talking to fellow readers about books!
The Gift of Books
Photo: Hillaire via Flickr “Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You …
The Education of Yuri: Jerry Pinto
Published by Speaking Tiger, 2022, 403 pages.Review by Rishad Patell and Suroor Alikhan The following is a combination of Rishad's and Suroor's reviews of The Education of Yuri, differentiated by typeface. This delightful coming-of-age story by Jerry Pinto is a must-read for anyone who grew up in Bombay or has any relation to the …
The Winter Spirits—Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights
Authors: Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Andrew Michael Hurley, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Natasha Pulley, Elizabeth Macneal, Bridget Collins, Stuart Turton, Jess Kidd, Catriona Ward, Susan Stokes-Chapman, Laura PurcellPublished by Sphere, 2023, 464 pages. Twelve gifts for the twelve days of Christmas as the song goes, but there are no pipers piping, ladies dancing or a …
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The Best Books of 2023
Photo: Yulia Grigoryeva via Shutterstock The year 2023 is almost at an end—where did it go? But the community of readers always seem to find time to read—or to listen to books. So, as always, my request for the best books you read this year has yielded a long and varied list. There are overlaps. …
Wild Coast—Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge: John Gimlette
Published by Profile Books, 2011, 384 pages.Review by Rishad Patell A difficult book to review. On one hand, John Gimlette’s book on the northern coast of South America provides a great deal of insight into the countries of Guyana and Suriname and the French department of French Guiana. Often ignored in travel writing and rarely …
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Travelling with Whales: An Interview with Doreen Cunningham
Photo: Joanna Szymkiewicz Doreen Cunningham is an Irish-British writer, who was born in Wales. She is the author of Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales, which won the 2020 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction; and was shortlisted for The Pat Kavanagh Award and the 2021 Eccles Centre & Hay …
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The Black Count—Napoleon’s Rival and the Real Count of Monte Cristo–General Alexandre Dumas: Tom Reiss
Published by Vintage / Crown, 2012, 414 pages. Published in the US as The Black Count—Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo We know Alexandre Dumas’s novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, as a work of fiction. But he based a lot of it on the life of his father, also Alexandre …
The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka: Josef Skvorecky
Translated from Czech by Rosemary Kavan, Kaca Polackova and George TheinerPublished by Faber & Faber / W. W. Norton & Company, 1973, 288 pages. Original version published in 1966. Meet Lieutenant Boruvka of the Czechoslovak police: a rotund man with baby blue eyes, a tuft of hair on top of his head, and a mournful …
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By Night the Mountain Burns: Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
Translated from Spanish by Jethro SoutarPublished by And Other Stories, 2014, 275 pages. Original version published in 2008. “[F]or our island was all alone at sea and there was no other land we could join forces with to combat our lack of everything. It was around then that I realised we islanders had no one …
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Talking About Books 