Translated from Italian by Stash LuczkiwPublished by Harvill Secker and HarperOne, 2020, 137 pages. Original version published in 2018. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen’s book about his trip to the Dolpo region in the Himalayas, was published in 1978. It is a blend of travelogue, philosophy and nature writing. Almost four decades later, in 2017, …
Continue reading Without Ever Reaching the Summit: Paolo Cognetti
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 …
Review by Susan T. LandryPublished by Penguin Random House, 2022, 400 pages. Forgive me for starting with a brief digression before I tell you about Worn by Sofi Thanhauser. There is a connection. Last summer, July 2021, I read All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, which was a literal eye-opener. She tells the story …
Continue reading Worn—A People’s History of Clothing: Sofi Thanhauser
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 …
Continue reading The Middle—A Story of Love, Life & Laughter: Nayana Goradia
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 …
Published by John Murray Press, 2021, 288 pages. “...the idea that wonder, mystery, awe, new worlds and undiscovered realms might lie a train ride away, rather than on a carbon-intensive flight to the far side of the globe, opened up possibilities for a different type of travel. What other unlikely landscapes might be lurking out …
Continue reading Outlandish—Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes: Nick Hunt
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 …
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2021, 304 pages. “Across the heart of Asia, at the ancient convergence of steppe and forest, the grasslands of Mongolia move towards Siberia in a grey-green sea. ... “Somewhere deep in this hinterland rises one of the most formidable rivers on earth. It drains a basin twice the size of …
Continue reading The Amur River—Between Russia and China: Colin Thubron
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 …
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, …
Continue reading Hidden Lives—A Family Memoir: Margaret Forster
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