Published by Penguin, 2022, 512 pages. Two girls grow up together in 1920s British Malaya: Ella, the daughter of the English owner of a tin mine and his Malayan wife, and Noor, the daughter of the family’s cook. The girls are inseparable, even though Ella’s mother does not seem to approve. The girls swear a …
Category: Historical fiction
The Marriage Portrait: Maggie O’Farrell
Review by Susan T. LandryPublished by Knopf and Headline Publishing Group, 2022, 448 pages. I can't remember the exact circumstances that led me to plunge into Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet two years ago. I am a reasonably omnivorous reader, but rarely choose historical fiction when looking for a new book to get lost in. Not sure …
The Devil’s Company: David Liss
Published by Ballantine Books, 2009, 369 pages. This is a gripping story set in 18th century London. Thief-taker[1] Benjamin Weaver is asked by a mysterious man called Cobb to carry out a dangerous assignment. When Weaver declines, Cobb resorts to other means. He threatens three people close to Weaver with destitution unless Weaver agrees to …
The Widows of Malabar Hill: Sujata Massey
Published by Soho Press, Inc., 2018, 400 pages. This is more than just a crime novel: by setting it in India in the early 1900s, Sujata Massey paints a vivid portrait of the country and especially of the lives of the women at the time. The book starts in Bombay in 1921. The British are …
Tyll: Daniel Kehlmann
Translated from German by Ross BenjaminPublished by riverrun, 2020, 352 pages. Original version published in 2017. The jester or trickster is a ubiquitous figure, popping up in mythologies, literature, street theatre, and in playing cards and tarot. He (it’s almost always a man) is an entertainer, mentally and physically agile, and able to speak truth …
The Moor’s Account: Laila Lalami
Published by Random House / Pantheon / Periscope / Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, 336 pages. History is written by the victors, as the saying goes. What we know of the conquest—or the invasion—of the Americas tends to come from those who conquered the land. This book gives another perspective—the narrator, Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, …
Tombland: C.J. Sansom
Published by Pan / Mulholland Books / Mantle, 2018, 880 pages. I wasn’t going to write this, since I’ve already reviewed a book in the Shardlake series (Dark Fire). But Tombland is a little different—it is not just a murder mystery but also describes a little-known event in English history. The series centres around Matthew …
The Man Who Loved Dogs: Leonardo Padura
Translated from Spanish by Anna Kushner Published by Bitter Lemon Press and Farrar Strauss & Giroux “If the social dream and economic utopia supporting it had become corrupt to the core, what remained of the greatest experiment man had ever dreamed of?” It is easy to forget today how seductive the idea of communism was …
The Dictator’s Last Night: Yasmina Khadra
Translated from French by Julian Evans On 20 October 2011, the news was full of the capture of the Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, found hiding in a culvert in near Sirte. It was an unimaginable fall for the man who saw himself as the saviour of his people who, in turn, loved him. Outside Libya, …
The Matthew Bartholomew Chronicles: Susanna Gregory
Monks and murder in the Middle Ages—an irresistible formula! Maybe it's the mixing of piety and nefarious doings that makes it so attractive. And a reason why this is one of my favourite crime series. It is set in Cambridge in the 14th century, and the detective is Matthew Bartholomew, a young physician who teaches medicine at …
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