Published by Corsair, 2018, 384 pages. “Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea… . Then within the marsh…true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp …
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!
Babylon: Yasmina Reza
Translated from French by Linda AsherPublished by Seven Stories Press, 2018, 208 pages. Original version published in 2016. “The world isn’t tidy. It’s a mess. I don’t try to make it neat.” This epigraph from Garry Winograd, an American street photographer, opens the book. The story is narrated by Elisabeth, a sixty-year-old woman looking back …
The Emperor of Ocean Park: Stephen L. Carter
Published by Vintage, 2002, 672 pages. When Oliver Garland, a well-respected judge, dies—ostensibly of a heart attack—his daughter, Mariah, suspects foul play. Her brother, Tal, a professor of law at a university, is sceptical. Oliver (whom Tal refers to as The Judge) was tipped to a Supreme Court judge, one of the two black judges. …
Continue reading The Emperor of Ocean Park: Stephen L. Carter
Beauty is a Wound: Eka Kurniawan
Translated from Indonesian by Annie TuckerPublished by Pushkin Press, 2016, 480 pages. Original version published in 2002. “One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. … She had passed away at fifty-two, rose again after being dead for twenty-one years, and from that point …
A Man Called Ove: Fredrick Backman
Translated from Swedish by Henning KochPublished by Washington Square Press, 2014, 320 pages. Original version published in 2012. “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his finger a policeman’s flashlight.” When we meet him, …
A Haunted House and Other Stories: Virginia Woolf
Published by Vintage, 1944, 336 pages. I haven’t read Virginia Woolf for decades, and I had forgotten just how well she writes. I had bought this collection of her short stories in the 1980s, and it was one of the many books I had left behind in my parents’ house when I moved. It has …
Continue reading A Haunted House and Other Stories: Virginia Woolf
Go, Went, Gone: Jenny Erpenbeck
Translated from German by Susan BernofskyPublished by Portobello Books, 2017, 304 pages. Original version published in 2015. “War destroys everything…your family, your friends, the place where you lived, your work, your life. When you become foreign…you don’t have a choice. You don’t know where to go. You don’t know anything. I can’t see myself anymore, …
Best books of 2019
Photo by Abee5 (CC BY 2.0) Another year is drawing to a close, and it’s time to look back at the books we have read and pull out some of the best. Thank you for contributing to this list and making it so varied. I was delighted to see several books in translation this year. …
The Places in Between: Rory Stewart
Published by Mariner Books / Harper Perennial / Picador, 2004, 400 pages. Rory Stewart had set out to walk from Iran all the way to Nepal—through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But in December 2000, when the Iranian government took away his visa, the Taliban refused to allow him to enter Afghanistan. So Stewart had to …
Magpie Murders: Anthony Horowitz
Published by Orion, 2016, 464 pages. This is a whodunit within a whodunit. One Friday evening, Susan Ryeland, the Head of Fiction at Cloverleaf Books, picks up Magpie Murders, the latest manuscript by Alan Conway—one of their most successful writers—and takes it home. She pours herself a glass of wine and starts to read. As …
Talking About Books 