The Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler Published by Eland, London, 2006, 253 pages. Originally published in 1941 by the Left Book Club.Review by Tom Peak Arthur Koestler was a curiosity. So often spent rowing against the tide, his life personifies the experience and aura of the twentieth century intellectual more than any other. So …
Continue reading Koestler’s Kafkaesque Nightmare: Parallels Beyond Perception
Translated from Italian by Ann GoldsteinPublished by Alfred A. Knopf, 2016, 233 pages. Original version published in 2016.Review by Imran Ali Khan In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri is a beautiful read that explores the relationship between a writer, language and the nature of the self. The book explores the writer's relationship with Italian, a …
Published by Grove Press / Vintage, 2014, 320 pages. A hawk stares out from the cover of this book: it is hard to turn away from the fierce intensity of its gaze. And intense, too, is how I would describe this book, which is about grief, trauma and the relationship between humans and goshawks. When …
From Rags to Riches—A Story of Abu Dhabi: Mohammed Al-FahimPublished by CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 1995, 192 pages. Review by Lesley O’DowdMohammed Al-Fahim’s biography, From Rags to Riches was first published in 1995. By the time he wrote this illuminating story, Al-Fahim was an eminent, highly respected Emirati businessman in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As he …
Translated from Spanish by Stacey Alba D. SkarPublished by Alfaguara, 2007, 320 pages. Published in English by Duke University Press Books, 2011, 264 pages. This is the story of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, written by someone who—in the late 1980s—became the country’s vice-president in the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government of Daniel …
Continue reading Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista—Sergio Ramírez
Review by Lesley O’Dowd National news in countries around the world showed 16 year old Malala addressing the United Nations in July 2013. Viewers heard her eloquent plea for the right to an education. Since recommencing in England the education interrupted by the near-fatal Taliban bullet in her head, Malala has produced an autobiography, co-authored …
Review by Abbas HassanPublished by Penguin, 2011, 527 pages This is a very readable and sweeping account of Charles Dickens' life. What I found striking about the book was that it presented a very lucid, chatty narrative with trivia about all the books he wrote, the friends he kept (and did not), his habits, his …
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