Published by Beating Windward Press, 2014, 178 pages. “My life was a deconstructed text, and I was surrounded by words—their sustaining luxuries and dangers. Words have power; you never know what may come of them. Take this: I want to leave—the rest is a jigsaw of memory taking up space in my head. I want …
Homegoing: Yaa Gyasi
Published by Penguin, 2016, 305 pages. Effia and Esi, two Asante women, born in Ghana—then known as the Gold Coast—are half-sisters but unaware of each other’s existence. They go on to lead very different lives, and the paths they take affect the generations that follow. The book begins in the late 18th century. The British …
Les années: Annie Ernaux
Published by folio, 2008, 254 pages. Published in English as The Years, Seven Stories Press, 2017. Translated from French by Alison L. Strayer. “All the images will disappear. ...“—all the twilight images of the early years, the pools of light from a summer Sunday, images from dreams in which the dead parents come back to …
Nature Cure: Richard Mabey
Published by Vintage, 2005, 228 pages. “My past, or lack of it, had caught up with me. I’d been bogged down in the same place for too long, trapped by habits and memories. I was clotted with rootedness. And in the end I’d fallen ill and run out of words. My Irish grandfather, a day-worker …
Reflecting Argentinian Society: An Interview with Claudia Piñeiro
(Note: This interview was originally conducted in Spanish and translated by Leslie Jones.Lea aquí la versión en español.) Claudia Piñeiro is an Argentinian author and scriptwriter. One of her best-known books is Las Viudas de los Jueves (2005, published in English as Thursday Night Widows, 2009), which was made into a film in 2009 and …
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A Book of Days: Patti Smith
Published by Bloomsbury, 2022, 386 pages. This is a book that keeps giving. The multi-talented Patti Smith—singer, songwriter, photographer, author, painter—has put together a collection of photographs (most of them taken by Smith with her 250 Land Camera), one for each day of the year. This book came from her Instagram account, which she started …
Cloud Cuckoo Land: Anthony Doerr
Published by 4th Estate, 2021, 577 pages. “Maybe in the old days men did walk the earth as beasts, and a city of birds floated in the heavens between the realms of men and gods. Or maybe, like all lunatics, the shepherd made his own truth, and so for him, true it was.” “‘I know …
The House of Doors: Tan Twan Eng
Published by Canongate, 2023, 306 pages. British Malaya, 1921. The writer William Somerset Maugham (referred to in the book as Willie) is staying with his old friend Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley. Willie is going through a difficult time: his writer’s block is compounded by the fact that he has just learned that he …
The Gift of Books
Photo: Hillaire via Flickr “Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You …
The Education of Yuri: Jerry Pinto
Published by Speaking Tiger, 2022, 403 pages.Review by Rishad Patell and Suroor Alikhan The following is a combination of Rishad's and Suroor's reviews of The Education of Yuri, differentiated by typeface. This delightful coming-of-age story by Jerry Pinto is a must-read for anyone who grew up in Bombay or has any relation to the …
Talking About Books 