Published by Harper & Collins / Faber & Faber, 2012, 448 pages. Dellarobia Turnbow is heading up to the cabin owned by her family to meet a lover, trying to break out of the suffocating life she lives. But she never gets there. An amazing sight on an overlook on the other side of the …
Gun Island: Amitav Ghosh
Published by Penguin Hamish Hachette / John Murray, 2019, 320 pages.Review by Imran Ali Khan Amitav Ghosh’s new book, Gun Island (Penguin, Random House), has come to us three years since his last book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, where Ghosh contemplates the dangers of climate change, “At exactly the time when …
Middle England: Jonathan Coe
Published by Viking / Penguin, 2018, 432 pages. The result of the referendum on Brexit in 2016 sent shockwaves through not only the UK, but Europe and beyond. Looking back now, the "why" is a little clearer—the anger, the fact that many voted emotionally, and the complacency of the ruling elite. In Middle England, Jonathan …
Conclave: Robert Harris
Published by Hutchinson / Arrow, 2016, 400 pages. Electing the successor to St. Peter—a man who will be the leader of the Catholic Church, the head of the Vatican and one of the most powerful spiritual leaders in the world—is carried out in strict secrecy. This secrecy and the political intrigues that go on behind …
Abburi Chayadevi (1933-2019): A writer who never stopped asking questions
Review by Sadhana RamchanderPublished by Saptaparni, 2017, 72 pages. In 2016, when Anuradha Gunupati and I met 83-year old Abburi Chayadevi to tell her about our plans to publish a book on her writing and craft, she asked, “Why do we need this book? I am already suffering from fame.” I was delighted to find …
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La bouche pleine de terre: Branimir Šćepanović
Translated from Serbian into French by Jean Descat, and into English by Lovett Fielding EdwardsPublished by Éditions L'Age d'Homme, 1975, 84 pages. English version published by Longship Press, 1980, 83 pages. Original version published in 1974. Although this book exists in English (as The Mouth Full of Earth), it is out of print. But I …
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Tombland: C.J. Sansom
Published by Pan / Mulholland Books / Mantle, 2018, 880 pages. I wasn’t going to write this, since I’ve already reviewed a book in the Shardlake series (Dark Fire). But Tombland is a little different—it is not just a murder mystery but also describes a little-known event in English history. The series centres around Matthew …
The Book of Dust, Book 1: La Belle Sauvage—Philip Pullman
Published by Penguin Random House, 2017, 560 pages. A mysterious substance called Dust; the alethiometer, an instrument that can reveal the truth; and daemons, animal-shaped manifestations of people’s inner selves: we are in familiar territory, the world of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. Almost 20 years after the last book in the trilogy was …
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The Red-Haired Woman: Orhan Pamuk
Translated from Turkish by Ekin OklapPublished by Faber & Faber, 2017, 272 pages. Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel is about obsession, guilt and the destructive relations between fathers and sons. The novel is narrated by Cem, looking back on himself as a 16-year-old boy. His father, a pharmacist and a communist, is often absent—he is either …
The History of Bees: Maja Lunde
Translated from Norwegian by Diane OatleyPublished by Scrivener UK / Simon & Schuster, 2017, 352 pages. Original version published in 2015. We are in the midst of the sixth extinction and are losing species at an alarming rate. But we seem to have trouble recognizing the scale of the loss. How many of us associate …
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