Translated from Arabic by Emily DanbyPublished by Arabia Books, 2013, 124 pages. Original version published in 2008. A woman in Damascus wakes in the night, sees a triangle of light where a door is left ajar and walks in. She finds her maid in bed with her husband. She throws the maid out, and immediately …
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!
Les Misérables: Victor Hugo
Translated from French by Norman DennyPublished by Penguin, 1976 (this translation), 1232 pages. Original version first published in 1862. This is probably one of Victor Hugo’s best-known books, popularized by the musical starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. But since a two-hour film can only provide a brief summary, I decided to read …
Washington Black: Esi Edugyan
Published by Serpent's Tail, 2018, 448 pages. Although this book starts on a Barbados plantation in 1830, it is not really about slavery but follows a young slave, Washington Black, over six years, starting with his life on the Faith plantation. As the book begins, Washington is 11 years old, and the owner of the …
There There: Tommy Orange
Published by Harvill Secker / Vintage, 2018, 304 pages. Native Americans, or Indians, were the first settlers in North America. But when colonizers from Europe came, they not only took away the Native Americans' lands and livelihoods but rewrote their narratives. There There is Tommy Orange’s way of reclaiming the narrative of the Native Americans …
Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film—Syd Field
Published by Bantam Dell, 2001, 336 pages. What makes a movie great? Why are some movies memorable while others disappear into obscurity? The foundation underlying the performances and the directing is the screenplay. A screenplay can make or break a film. Going to the Movies is a combination of memoirs and a lesson on the …
A Gentleman in Moscow: Amor Towles
Published by Hutchinson / Harvill, 2017, 512 pages. “If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.” In 1922, a few years after the Bolshevik revolution, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to house arrest by the Bolsheviks for being an aristocrat. The Count’s home at the …
Pachinko: Min Jin Lee
Published by Hachette / Head of Zeus / Apollo, 2017, 560 pages. “History has failed us, but no matter.” Pachinko is about Koreans living in Japan, a group of immigrants about whom not a lot has been written in fiction. The book starts in a little fishing village in Korea. Hoonie, a man with a …
The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Life with an Enchanting Tawny Owl—Martin Windrow
Published by Picador / Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Bantam Press, 2014, 320 pages. “Shaving is tricky with an owl on your right shoulder.” Especially when the owl sees it as a game, pecking at the razor at the end of each stroke and trying to eat the shaving cream. Meet Mumble, the Tawny Owl …
Cutting for Stone: Abraham Verghese
Published by Vintage, 2009, 560 pages. This is a rich story, interweaving the lives of people working at a clinic in Addis Ababa run by a Christian mission (known as the Missing Clinic by the local people and everyone else) with the history of Ethiopia from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Sister Mary Joseph …
Judas: Amos Oz
Translated from Hebrew by Nicholas de LangePublished by Chatto & Windus / Vintage, 2016, 288 pages. “Here is a story from the winter days of the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960. It is a story of error and desire, of unrequited love, and of a religious question that remains unresolved. Some of …
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