Photo: Vipman via Shutterstock This article was inspired by My Life in Middlemarch, a bibliomemoir by Rebecca Mead, which draws on her readings of George Eliot’s Middlemarch over the years. I loved the idea of writing memoirs that are intertwined with a book. But since there isn’t a book I reread regularly, I thought that …
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 …
The Best Books of 2021
Photo: Yulia Grigoryeva via Shutterstock It is already the end of 2021! The year has flown past. We haven’t been locked down quite as much as we were last year—we did manage to see friends and family—but Covid isn’t history yet, and no one is sure what the coming months will bring. As always, we …
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House: Cherie Jones
Published by Tinder Press / Headline / Little, Brown, 2021, 320 pages. This is a powerful, gut-wrenching book set on Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, the kind of place you see advertised in tourist brochures, with coconut trees, sand and blue seas. Cherie Jones’s novel looks behind this perfect façade, revealing the lives of the people—especially the …
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Index, A History of the—A Bookish Adventure: Dennis Duncan
Published by Allan Lane, 2021, 340 pages. “The humble back-of-book index is one of those inventions that are so successful, so integrated into our daily practices, that they can often become invisible.” Dennis Duncan has taken the index from the back pages into the forefront in this informative and entertaining book. Who would have imagined …
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Navigating Nigeria: An Interview with Noo Saro-Wiwa
Noo Saro-Wiwa is a writer and freelance journalist, born in Nigeria and brought up in the UK. She is the author of Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, which was nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. It was also selected by The Sunday Times as its Travel …
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We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day: Ivana Bodrožić
Translated from Croatian by Ellen Elias-BursaćPublished by Seven Stories Press UK, 2021, 223 pages. Original version published in 2016. “Everyone is running from someone, or from their own past.” Corruption and the long shadows thrown by war are at the heart of this political thriller from Croatia. Nora, a young journalist in Zagreb, is sent …
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Vultures in the Living Room and Other Stories: Lula Falcão
Translated from Portuguese by Helena Cavendish de Moura with Andrew Michael BrownPublished in a bilingual edition by Casa Forte Press, 2017, 123 pages. Original version published in 2017. Lula Falcão is an award-winning journalist, political advocate and writer. His criticism of the current President Jai Bolsonaro has landed him on the list of “intellectuals to …
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The Fishermen: Chigozie Obioma
Published by One (Pushkin Press), 2018, 352 pages. A madman prophesies that a boy will be killed by a fisherman. The fear created by the prophecy changes the boy. But will the fear itself lead to the murder or is the madman able to see the future? The Fishermen is narrated by Ben, looking back …
1Q84: Haruki Murakami
Translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip GabrielPublished by Vintage, 2011, 944 pages. Original version published in 2009-2010. Prepare to walk into Haruki Murakami’s strange world. You can slip through the thin barrier between this world and an alternate one simply by taking an emergency exit off a highway or ghost-writing a particular book. …
Talking About Books 