Selected and translated from Urdu by M. Asaduddin with additional translations by Ralph RussellPublished by Penguin, 2001, 261 pages. “In my stories, I’ve put down everything with objectivity. Now, if people find them obscene, let them go to hell. It’s my belief that experiences can never be obscene if they are based on authentic realities …
Continue reading Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chugtai
Photo: Diccon Bewes Diccon Bewes is a writer who was born in the UK but has lived in Switzerland for many years, and is now a Swiss citizen. His books include Slow Train to Switzerland, where he retraces the journey of Jemima Morrell who was part of Thomas Cook’s first tour of the country in …
Continue reading Travels through Switzerland: An Interview with Diccon Bewes
Published by Penguin, / Bantam Doubleday Dell / Everyman's Library / Oxford University Press, 1860, 719 pages. “There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road—there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white …
Published by Random House, 2015, 335 pages. A performance of King Lear: the actor playing King Lear, Arthur Leander, is forgetting his lines and acting odd. He collapses with a heart attack. The curtain quickly comes down, Jeevan Chaudhary, a paramedic who happens to be in audience, rushes to help him. An ambulance is called, …
Published by Penguin, 2020, 400 pages. If you’re looking for a light read with a bit of murder thrown in, then look no further. Richard Osman has written a delightful whodunit, set in an upscale retirement village in the UK. Septuagenarians Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron live at Coopers Chase, a retirement village. They form …
Translated from French by Shaun WhitesidePublished by W&N, 2022, 144 pages. Original version published in 2011. Giverny: a beautiful, picturesque village in France, known for its most famous resident, the impressionist painter Claude Monet, who is famous for his paintings of water lilies. Artists and tourists flock to the village to see the beautiful gardens …
Photo: Aida Silvestri Ann Morgan is a writer based in the UK who has inspired readers by her project, A Year of Reading the World. In 2012, she read a book from every country in the world and blogged about it. Her blog highlights the richness and diversity of books, including those not originally published …
Continue reading Reading the World: An Interview with Ann Morgan
Published by Grove Press UK, 2019, 432 pages. “If I do speak, if I do tell what happened six years ago in that village in the mountains, a village so small it appears only on military maps, it will not be for reasons of nobility. The chance for nobility is over. Even this, story or …
Published by Picador, 2020, 224 pages. “How many times have I returned in my dreams to this hill. It is always summer as I look out over the gold and green fields, ditches foaming with hawthorn and lilac, river glinting under the sun like a blade. When I was young, I found sanctuary here and …
Continue reading Walking with Ghosts—A Memoir: Gabriel Byrne
Published by Canongate Books, 2020, 448 pages. “The newspapers say that the [Italian] soldiers marched to Axum and took the city without a single shot being fired. … They claim that…Adua was finally, proudly, taken by the Italians on 5 October 1935 and the tiny, nondescript village welcomed the invaders with bowed heads and ululations. …
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