Translated from French by Julian EvansPublished by Gallic Books, 2015, 160 pages. Original version published in 2015. 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 …
Category: Fiction
Everything I Never Told You: Celeste Ng
Published by Penguin, 2014, 304 pages. “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins a book about a family with an absence at its heart—that of the oldest daughter who dies just before her 16th birthday. Although there is a mystery to her death, this is not a whodunit. It’s a story …
Leaves of the Banyan Tree: Albert Wendt
Published by University of Hawaii Press, 1994, 426 pages. I didn’t know much about Samoa when I started reading this. I had come across parts of Margaret Mead’s 1928 anthropological study a long time ago, a study that was later proven to be inaccurate and misleading. And Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last years there. …
The House of Sleep: Jonathan Coe
Published by Viking / Penguin, 1997, 352 pages. Jonathan Coe’s novel about obsession, love, sleep and dreams follows a group of students, moving between their lives as students and 12 years later. We are told in the beginning that the odd-numbered chapters are set in 1983-84 and the even-numbered ones in 1996. But although it …
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”: New Readings 50 Years After?
Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.Published by Penguin / Perennial, 1970, 432 pages. Original version published in 1967.Review by Sergio Sandoval Fonseca This year bibliophiles around the world celebrate 50 years of book life for “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967), a novel that pioneered a new genre, gave its author, García Márquez “Gabo”, the …
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Arundhati Roy
Published by Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 2017, 464 pages.Review by Usha Raman and Suroor Alikhan Below is a review in two voices—much as the book is a story told through several. Differentiated less by opinion than typeface. I opened my pre-ordered copy of "The Ministry..." with a bit of trepidation mixed with skepticism. Like many …
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Set in Darkness: Ian Rankin
Published by Orion, 2000, 496 pages. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book in the Rebus series, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed them. The books are set in Edinburgh, which is a character in its own right. Ian Rankin knows the city well, from the posh part with the big houses …
Some histories can never be reconciled
The Underground Railroad published by Doubleday / Random House, 2016, 320 pages.Killers of the Flower Moon published by Random House, 2016, 352 pages.Review by Usha Raman Strange fruit—the title of a song by Billie Holliday that's been playing on my car stereo, and I can't get it out of my mind...nor can I get the images …
Paradise of the Blind: Duong Thu Huang
Translated from Vietnamese by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPhersonPublished by Penguin / William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993, 274 pages. Original version published in 1988. It seems like a lot of the stories about Viet Nam are about the war, and that too from the American perspective. The country itself seems to disappear, merely providing a …
Kaveena: Boubacar Boris Diop
Translated from French by Bhakti Shringarpure and Sara C. HanaburghPublished by Indiana University Press, 2016, 246 pages. Original version published in 2006. This novel is set in an unnamed African country and starts against a backdrop of civil unrest. The head of the secret service, Col. Asante Kroma, is looking for the deposed president, N’Zo …
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