Published by Faber and Faber, 2006, 144 pages. This is Tom Stoppard’s play about Czechoslovakia, protest, love, and the power of rock and roll. It covers the years from 1968 to 1990, and the action moves between the house of Max—a staunch communist and a member of the British Communist Party—in Cambridge and the apartment …
Category: Fiction
Snow: John Banville
Published by Faber Books, 2020, 352 pages. “‘The body is in the library,’ Colonel Osborne said. ‘Come this way.’” This book begins like a traditional English whodunit: with a body in the library in a country house. It’s a cliché—except that John Banville doesn’t do clichés. He uses a murder mystery to paint a portrait …
A Madness of Sunshine: Nalini Singh
Published by Gollancz, 2020, 352 pages. “That was the town Anahera remembered, the town that had suffocated her, the town where there were no secrets—and far too many hidden things.” Anahera is from Golden Cove, a small town in New Zealand’s South Island. She left for the UK, became a well-known classical pianist and married …
The Selfless Act of Breathing: J.J. Bola
Published by Dialogue Books, 2021, 393 pages. “I quit my job, I am taking my life savings—$9,021—and when it runs out, I am going to kill myself.” Michael Kabongo is a schoolteacher in London. He is going through severe depression and feels alone, disconnected, and unable to confide in anyone, even his closest friends. London …
The Overstory: Richard Powers
Published by Vintage, 2018, 625 pages. “A man in the boreal north lies on his back on the cold ground at dawn. ... [T]he spruces pour out messages in media of their own invention. They speak through their needles, trunks, and roots. They record in their own bodies the history of every crisis they’ve lived …
The Promise: Damon Galgut
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2021, 304 pages. The Promise revolves around a white South African family—Manie and Rachel Swart and their children Astrid, Anton and Amor—and an unkept promise. Manie promises the dying Rachel that he will give their maid Salome the deeds to the house in which she lives. But once Rachel dies, …
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House: Cherie Jones
Published by Tinder Press / Headline / Little, Brown, 2021, 320 pages. This is a powerful, gut-wrenching book set on Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, the kind of place you see advertised in tourist brochures, with coconut trees, sand and blue seas. Cherie Jones’s novel looks behind this perfect façade, revealing the lives of the people—especially the …
Continue reading How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House: Cherie Jones
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day: Ivana Bodrožić
Translated from Croatian by Ellen Elias-BursaćPublished by Seven Stories Press UK, 2021, 223 pages. Original version published in 2016. “Everyone is running from someone, or from their own past.” Corruption and the long shadows thrown by war are at the heart of this political thriller from Croatia. Nora, a young journalist in Zagreb, is sent …
Continue reading We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day: Ivana Bodrožić
Vultures in the Living Room and Other Stories: Lula Falcão
Translated from Portuguese by Helena Cavendish de Moura with Andrew Michael BrownPublished in a bilingual edition by Casa Forte Press, 2017, 123 pages. Original version published in 2017. Lula Falcão is an award-winning journalist, political advocate and writer. His criticism of the current President Jai Bolsonaro has landed him on the list of “intellectuals to …
Continue reading Vultures in the Living Room and Other Stories: Lula Falcão
The Fishermen: Chigozie Obioma
Published by One (Pushkin Press), 2018, 352 pages. A madman prophesies that a boy will be killed by a fisherman. The fear created by the prophecy changes the boy. But will the fear itself lead to the murder or is the madman able to see the future? The Fishermen is narrated by Ben, looking back …
Talking About Books 