Photo: Africa Studio via Shutterstock Another year has rolled around. I asked for your lists of the best books you have read in 2022, and as always, was overwhelmed by your response. There is something for everyone here. Fiction choices include novels about Argentina’s brutal dictatorship, India’s partition, unkept promises in South Africa, stories about …
The Anthropocene Reviewed—Essays on a Human-Centred Planet: John Green
Review by Kristine GouldingPublished by Random House, 2021, 304 pages. The Anthropocene—a term that I had to Google when first faced with it—is the current geological age in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. This book comprises a series of essays that reviews different parts of the human experience, on …
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Checkpoint: David Albahari
Translated from Serbian by Ellen Elias-BursaćPublished by Restless Books, 2018, 197 pages. Original version published in 2010. “We had no choice but to continue doing what we’d come there to do: guard and watch over the passing of people and goods through the checkpoint. To be honest, we hadn’t even been told whether the checkpoint …
The Marriage Portrait: Maggie O’Farrell
Review by Susan T. LandryPublished by Knopf / Headline Publishing Group, 2022, 448 pages. I can't remember the exact circumstances that led me to plunge into Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet two years ago. I am a reasonably omnivorous reader, but rarely choose historical fiction when looking for a new book to get lost in. Not sure …
Travelling Back in Time: An Interview with David Liss
David Liss is an American author. His novels include A Conspiracy of Paper, The Coffee Trader, The Devil’s Company and The Peculiarities. Most of David’s books are historical fiction, set in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2001, A Conspiracy of Paper (the first of the Benjamin Weaver series) won the Macavity Award for the …
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Nostalgia: Mircea Cărtărescu
Translated from Romanian by Julian SemilianPublished by Penguin and New Directions, 2005, 332 pages. Original version published in 1989. This collection of three short stories and two novellas, set mainly in Bucharest, was written during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime and published in 1989, the year his regime fell. Nostalgia was originally published under the title Visul …
Me: Elton John
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 …
The Eighth Detective: Alex Pavesi
Published by Picador and Michael Joseph (also published as The Eight Detectives), 2020, 291 pages. An editor goes to a remote Mediterranean island to meet a reclusive writer, whose book her publisher wants to reprint. In 1937, Grant McAllister drew up a set of mathematical rules for a murder mystery, and wrote seven stories to …
Exploring Remote Regions: An Interview with Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent
Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent is a British travel writer, broadcaster and public speaker. Photo: Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent Her books include Land of the Dawn-lit Mountain: A Journey Across India’s Forgotten Frontier, which was a runner-up in the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards; A Short Ride in the Jungle: The Ho Chi Minh Trail by Motorcycle; and Tuk Tuk to the …
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Older Brother: Daniel Mella
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowellPublished by Charco Press, 2018, 148 pages. Original version published in 2017. In the summer of 2014, during one of the biggest storms to hit the coast of Uruguay, Alejandro is killed in a lightning strike. Ale, as he was known, was aware that there was an electrical storm brewing. …
Talking About Books 