Published by Pan Books, 2019, 398 pages. “I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do, or even what I could do. I knew I could sing and play piano, but I clearly wasn’t pop star material. For one thing, I didn’t look like a pop star, as evidenced by my inability to carry …
Category: Autobiography / Biography / Memoir
The Liar Tells the Truth: Irshad Panjatan
2021, 287 pages. “In pure mime, the artist has to depend entirely on his body on an empty stage to create an atmosphere around him, plus the characters he depicts, to tell the story without any dialogues, music, or songs, and without any external aids like props and decorations. He has to fill the stage …
The Middle—A Story of Love, Life & Laughter: Nayana Goradia
Published by Vitasta Publishing, 2021, 148 pages. Nayana Goradia started her career writing short, catchy articles for newspapers. Her book is a collection of these articles—which appeared in a column called The Middle—in Indian newspapers such as The Statesman, The Times of India and The Hindustan Times. Her book also contains excerpts from Fly Me …
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The Favored Daughter—One Woman’s Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future: Fawzia Koofi with Nadene Ghouri
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 272 pages. “On the day I wrote the letter [that became chapter 1 in this book] I was warned not to travel because there had been a credible threat that the Taliban planned to kill me by planting an improvised explosive device (a roadside bomb) underneath my car. The Taliban …
This Tilting World: Colette Fellous
Translated from French by Sophie LewisPublished by Les Fugitives, 2019, 190 pages. Original version published in 2017. “[B]ut now it’s over, my novel is damaged, the world is damaged, I too am deeply wounded, something has happened here, something real, but everything can still begin, everything can begin again, I firmly believe it... “I must …
The Measure of a Man: Sidney Poitier
Published by Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins, 2001, 272 pages. “... I decided that I wanted to write a book about life. Just life itself. What I’ve learned by living more than seventy years of it. ... “I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the …
Hidden Lives—A Family Memoir: Margaret Forster
Published by Penguin, 1995, 320 pages. This is a family memoir: by tracing the lives of her grandmother, mother and herself, Margaret Forster looks at how things have changed for working-class women in the UK. This book brings to light the hidden lives, lives often considered too unimportant to be documented. Forster’s grandmother, Margaret Ann, …
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My Life in Middlemarch: Rebecca Mead
Published by Broadway Books, 2014, 309 pages. “Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does …
Suraiya Hasan Bose—Weaving a Legacy: Radhika Singh
Published by Tarapress, 2019, 176 pages. Suraiya Hasan Bose—Weaving a Legacy: Radhika Singh “Suraiya Hasan Bose is a name inscribed into the craft map of Andhra Pradesh. It speaks of a lifetime of passion and commitment to the cause of handloom from pre-Independence India to the present day.” This book pays tribute to Suraiya Hasan …
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Walking with Ghosts—A Memoir: Gabriel Byrne
Published by Picador, 2020, 224 pages. “How many times have I returned in my dreams to this hill. It is always summer as I look out over the gold and green fields, ditches foaming with hawthorn and lilac, river glinting under the sun like a blade. When I was young, I found sanctuary here and …
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