Translated from German by Joel AgeePublished by University of Chicago Press / Pushkin Vertigo, 1959, 192 pages. Original version published in 1958. The book starts with the narrator travelling to Chur in Switzerland to give a lecture on the art of writing detective stories. The talk is not a success, and the writer meets Dr. …
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!
On Writing—A Memoir of the Craft: Stephen King
Published by Scribner, 2000, 320 pages. This book on writing starts with two contradictory epigraphs: “Honesty is the best policy” and “Liars prosper”. Good fiction is a mix of the two. Writers invent, but also draw upon what they know. This book is far more than a primer on writing well. Stephen King starts and …
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Brick Lane: Monica Ali
Published by Doubleday / Black Swan, 2003, 416 pages. A portrait of the Bangladeshi community in London, Brick Lane follows Nazneen, a young girl from a village in Bangladesh who is married off to Chanu, an older Bangladeshi man, and moves with him to the UK. During her early years in London, Nazneen’s world is …
Minae Mizumura on the Hegemony of English: from The Claremont Review of Books
Mark A. Heberle reviews Minae Mizumura's The Fall of English, which looks at how English dominates not only science and the internet, but also publishing, and what this means for other languages, especially Japanese. To quote from the article: "This powerful, insightful work analyzes the predicament of world languages and literatures in an age when …
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A Long Way Down: Nick Hornby
Published by Viking / Penguin / Riverhead, 2005, 272 pages. New Year’s Eve, London, Toppers’ Block, named for the number of people who commit suicide by jumping off the roof. Martin, a disgraced TV presenter, has decided to end his life. He is ready for the job—he has brought a stepladder and wire cutters to …
What writers really do when they write: George Saunders (from The Guardian)
A wonderful piece by George Saunders on writing. Saunders is a short story writer, and his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, has just been published. He writes about how the idea for the book came to him, and what it takes to move from an idea to a finely honed piece of writing. "A …
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Dark Fire: C.J. Sansom
Published by Pan / Penguin, 2005, 512 pages. When I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed Susanna Gregory’s medieval whodunits, she lent me the entire series of novels set during the time of Henry VIII with a hunchback lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, as the main character. Having just finished the first one (although strictly speaking, …
New York Times on Truth and Lies in Fiction–Lie to Me: Fiction in the Post-Truth Era
Adam Kirsch New York Times, 17 January 2017 Adam Kirsch on the problematic relationship between truth and lies in writing. "Reality is the ingredient that turns a bad fiction into an enthralling one. "This dynamic is part of the novel’s origins. The earliest English novels, from 'Moll Flanders' (1722) to 'Clarissa' (1748), were published anonymously, …
Born to Run: Bruce Springsteen
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2016, 528 pages. It was in the early 80s that I first heard Bruce Springsteen. Looking for new music, I raided the tiny music shop in Secunderabad (India) and picked up Born to Run. I was hooked. The music spoke to me, although I was from a different culture and …
Voices from Chernobyl—The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster: Svetlana Alexievich
Translated from Russian by Keith GessenPublished by Picador / Dalkey Archive Press, 2005, 240 pages. Original version published in 1997. "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air." On 26 April 1986, Energy Block No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was …
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Talking About Books 