Published by Peepal Tree Press / TriQuarterly Books, 2005, 67 pages. The blurb on the back of this collection of poems from Kendall Hippolyte, a Santa Lucian poet, says “He writes in sonnets and villanelles, in idiomatic dramatic monologues that capture the rhythm of Caribbean speech, blues and rap”. This juxtaposition of the formal and …
Category: The reading challenge
Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista—Sergio Ramírez
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 …
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The File on H: Ismail Kadare
Translated from Jusuf Vrioni's French translation by David Bellos.Published by Arcade Publishing, 1998, 192 pages. Original version in Albanian published in 1981. Two naïve Irish-American scholars travel to Albania in the early 1930s in search of the origins of epic poetry—in particular, of Homer’s epics. And the only place where oral epic poetry still exists …
Brooklyn: Colm Toibin
Published by Penguin / Viking, 2009, 256 pages.Review by Joannah Caborn Wengler This book describes the first two years that a young girl, Eilis, from Ireland spends in Brooklyn when she emigrates to the US in the 1950s. On the face of it, it ought to be a rollicking ride: with a sudden departure, a …
The Garden of Evening Mists: Tan Twan Eng
Published by Canongate Canons, 2012, 352 pages.Review by Rishad Patell The Garden of Evening Mists is the story of Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of a Japanese POW camp in Malaya during World War 2. Now a lawyer, Yun Ling returns to the hills of the Cameron Highlands to fulfil her dead sister’s dream of …
I am Malala—The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban: Malala Yousafzai
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 …
The Book of Chameleons: Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn Published by Simon & Schuster, 2008, 180 pages. “Truth has a habit of being ambiguous... If it were exact, it wouldn’t be human.” This is my first book of the reading challenge and what a wonderful way to begin! A whimsical, lyrical story about truth and memory. The book …
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The 2014 Reading Challenge
The challenge for 2014 is to widen our reading horizons. To do this, we're forming a group of readers who will, between us, attempt to read a book from nearly every country in the world. The list of countries with suggested/potential authors has been created as a Google doc. The link will be emailed to …
Reading challenge!
My dear reading compatriots: I would like to propose something of a challenge. While I don't know the range of linguistic abilities among us, having never met the majority of you, I wonder if it would be possible for us as a group to undertake the same sort of challenge as BBC's Ann Morgan. Would …
Talking About Books 