Published by Everyman / Faber & Faber, 1998, 544 pages. A glassworks factory bought on a whim, and a trip to the other end of the world made on the toss of a coin: chance is the driver of most of the major events in this book. Oscar and Lucinda is a strange love story …
Category: Fiction
Indian women tell their stories
The Inner Courtyard: Stories by Indian Women, edited by Lakshmi HolmströmPublished by Rupa & Company, 1992, 228 pages.In Other Words: New Writing by Indian Women, selected by Urvashi Butalia and Ritu MenonPublished by T.H.E. Women's Press Ltd. / South Asia Books, 1995, 196 pages. “Women in India have traditionally been tellers of tales. They have …
10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World: Elif Shafak
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 320 pages. Tequila Leila, the prostitute, is dead. She has been murdered and her body dumped in a wheelie bin in Istanbul. She realizes “with a sinking feeling that her heart had just stopped beating, and her breathing had abruptly ceased, and whichever way she looked at her situation there …
Continue reading 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World: Elif Shafak
The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo: Germano Almeida
Translated from Portuguese by Sylvia GlaserPublished by New Directions; 2004, 152 pages. “The reading of the last will and testament of Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo ate up a whole afternoon. When he reached the one-hundred-and-fiftieth page, the notary admitted he was already tired…[H]e complained that the deceased, thinking he was drafting his will, had …
Continue reading The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo: Germano Almeida
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line: Deepa Anappara
Published by Random House / Vintage, 2020, 352 pages. When children start to go missing from a basti (slum) near Mumbai, three nine-year-olds from the basti decide to investigate. Jai watches crime shows on TV and fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes or Byomkesh Bakshi, a fictional Bengali detective. Pari is a bright girl, and although …
Continue reading Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line: Deepa Anappara
The Hours: Michael Cunningham
Published by Picador Modern Classics, 1998, 320 pages. “We throw our parties; …we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. …There's just …
Men without Women: Haruki Murakami
Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Ted GoosenPublished by Random House / Bond Street Books, 2017, 240 pages. Original version published in 2014. “Here's what hurts the most," Kafuku said. "I didn't truly understand her—or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she's dead and …
The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Translated from Spanish by Lucia GravesPublished by Penguin / W&N, 2004, 486 pages. Original version published in 2001. “This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed …
Girl, Woman, Other: Bernadine Evaristo
Published by Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 2019, 464 pages. A gay artist, an adopted child, a transgender woman, a successful lawyer, an old woman finding she has more in common with her transgender granddaughter than with her straight children…these are just some of the voices you hear in Bernadine Evaristo’s book, which in narrated in …
Black Leopard, Red Wolf: Marlon James
Published by Riverhead Books / Penguin, 2019, 640 pages. “The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.” This is how the book starts. It feels like a spoiler, because the crux of the story is that a man, known only as Tracker, has been paid to look for a boy. He isn’t sure …
Talking About Books 