Translated from Sanskrit by Arshia SattarPublished by Penguin, 1996, 320 pages. The original stories were written between 1063 to 1081. Kathasaritsagara can be translated as the “ocean of the sea of stories”. This is the mother lode of stories, composed by Somadeva around 1070 CE for the Kashmiri queen, Suryavati. But many of these had …
Category: Fiction
The Pledge: Friedrich Dürrenmatt
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. …
Of Love and Other Demons: Gabriel García Márquez
Published by Penguin / Vintage, 1995, 160 pages. Original version published in 1994.Translated from Spanish by Edith GrossmanReview by Thomas Peak Once, under a stifling October sun, Gabriel García Márquez, the great Latin American writer, observed the unceremonious wrenching open of a centuries-old tomb. As the sacred stones were smashed into rubble, bundles of luminescent golden …
Continue reading Of Love and Other Demons: Gabriel García Márquez
Zig-zagging around the world
The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith / The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal / The Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak / The Black Box by Alek Popov, translated from Bulgarian by Daniella and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de LupePublishing details belowReview …
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 …
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 …
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, …
Italian Shoes: Henning Mankell
Translated from Swedish by Laurie ThompsonPublished by Vintage, 2009, 247 pages. Original version published in 2006.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes We find an aging man, living by himself on a Swedish island, where he has been in solitude since his retirement 12 years back. Once, he made a mistake he regrets so badly he has …
The Glorious Heresies: Lisa McInerney
Published by John Murray, 2015, 384 pages. An intruder breaks into Maureen Phelan’s apartment. Without thinking, she brains him with a Holy Stone, a religious relic. Worrying over the dead body and the blood seeping into the grout on the kitchen floor, she calls her son James, a gangster, to deal with the mess. James …
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—JK Rowling, John Thorne and John Tiffany
Published by Sphere, 2016, 352 pages. So you thought we’d come to the end of the Harry Potter story…well, think again. JK Rowling, with some help this time, has written another instalment. This one takes place 19 years after the events of the last Potter book, and the plot revolves around Harry’s second son, Albus …
Continue reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—JK Rowling, John Thorne and John Tiffany
Talking About Books 