Translated from German by Susan BernofskyPublished by Portobello Books, 2017, 304 pages. Original version published in 2015. “War destroys everything…your family, your friends, the place where you lived, your work, your life. When you become foreign…you don’t have a choice. You don’t know where to go. You don’t know anything. I can’t see myself anymore, …
Best books of 2019
Photo by Abee5 (CC BY 2.0) Another year is drawing to a close, and it’s time to look back at the books we have read and pull out some of the best. Thank you for contributing to this list and making it so varied. I was delighted to see several books in translation this year. …
The Places in Between: Rory Stewart
Published by Mariner Books / Harper Perennial / Picador, 2004, 400 pages. Rory Stewart had set out to walk from Iran all the way to Nepal—through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But in December 2000, when the Iranian government took away his visa, the Taliban refused to allow him to enter Afghanistan. So Stewart had to …
Magpie Murders: Anthony Horowitz
Published by Orion, 2016, 464 pages. This is a whodunit within a whodunit. One Friday evening, Susan Ryeland, the Head of Fiction at Cloverleaf Books, picks up Magpie Murders, the latest manuscript by Alan Conway—one of their most successful writers—and takes it home. She pours herself a glass of wine and starts to read. As …
The Gap of Time: Jeanette Winterson
Published by Hogarth Press, 2015, 320 pages. “God doesn’t need to punish us. We can do that for ourselves. That’s why we need forgiveness.” A man driven crazy by jealousy, a wife accused of adultery and a lost child: this is Jeanette Winterson’s take on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.[1] But unlike Othello, The Winter’s Tale …
Flicker: Theodore Roszak
Published by Summit Books / Chicago Review Press, 1991, 608 pages. “[E]ntertainment rules more lives than art and rules them more despotically. People don’t put up their guard when they’re being entertained. The images and the messages slip through and take hold deeper.” Flicker is a thriller, a history of film (with a conspiracy …
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Olga Tokarczuk
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-JonesPublished by Fitzcarraldo Press / Thorndike Press, 2019, 274 pages. Original version published in 2009. “[S]ometimes I feel we’re living in a world we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with …
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32 Yolks—From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line: Eric Ripert
With Veronica ChambersPublished by Random House, 2017, 256 pages. “Only if you cook what you love and truly understand will people be happy with your food.” Good food—how it can sustain you, both physically and emotionally—is the centre of these memoirs. Eric Ripert, a well-known chef, writes about growing up in France and Andorra, and …
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The Sultanpur Chronicles—Shadowed City: Achala Upendran
Published by Hachette India, 2018, 360 pages. Welcome to a world of magic, flying carpets and rakshasas[1]! Before I go any further, full disclosure: Achala Upendran is a friend. This is her first novel. Sultanpur is a vast empire, ranging from mountainous Firozia to the cities of Dastakar. It is home to humans, djinns and …
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The Selector of Souls: Shauna Singh Baldwin
Published by Penguin Random House / Vintage / Knopf Canada, 2012, 560 pages. As the book begins, Damini commits a crime because she believes there is no choice. No one sees her commit it except the goddess Anamika Devi (the Unnamed One), but it haunts her. With this incident, Shauna Singh Baldwin sets up the …
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