Published by Scribner / Fourth Estate, 2014, 531 pages.Review by Thomas Peak and Susanne Gjønnes Set during the darkness of World War II, All the Light We Cannot See is a powerful and emotional novel. It follows a young boy and a girl caught up on each side of the whirlwind of Nazism and war. …
Saying goodbye to an iconic bookshop: Imran Ali Khan
The Strand Book Stall in Mumbai has been an icon for readers. Books of all sorts piled everywhere, where readers were encouraged to browse and get into conversations with like-minded people. It was one of my favourite places: a trip to Bombay (as it was called then) was incomplete unless I had been to Strand. …
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Catching Thunder—The True Story of the World’s Longest Sea Chase: Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter
Translated from Norwegian by Diane Oatley.Published by Zed Books, 2018, 400 pages.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes This true-life crime novel, Catching Thunder: The Story of the World’s Longest Sea Chase, is the dramatic account of Sea Shepherd’s 110-day long international pursuit of the pirate fishing vessel Thunder. Sea Shepherd is a group of activists committed …
Aya of Yop City: written by Marguerite Abouet, drawn by Clément Oubrerie
Translated from French by Drawn & QuarterlyPublished by Jonathan Cape, 2009, 128 pages. Original version published in 2005. The three young women in Aya of Yop City, the first in a series of graphic novels, have boys, parties, marriage and future careers on their mind. They rebel against their parents, pick unsuitable boyfriends and try …
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Of Human Freedom: Epictetus
Translated from Greek by Robert DobbinPublished by Penguin, 2010, 112 pages. The original Discourses of Epictetus were written down in 108 AD.Review by Thomas Peak This magical little book comes from a time and place far, far away. It is adapted from the Discourses written by Epictetus, an emancipated Greek slave living in the Roman …
Winter: Ali Smith
Published by Penguin and Anchor Books In 2017, two very different writers—Karl Ove Knausgård and Ali Smith—published books around the seasons, starting with Autumn and ending with Summer. However, while Knausgård’s books are more memoirs/missives to his young daughter, Smith’s books are novels that look at “the state of the nation” (ie, the UK). I’ve …
The Eye of Jade: Diane Wei Liang
Published by Picador, 2007, 240 pages. This is a detective story set in Beijing that provides a glimpse into life in modern China with all its contradictions. The central character, Mei, is a private detective. She is approached by a family friend, Uncle Chen, to look for a Han dynasty jade seal. The seal had …
Reflecting on The Grapes of Wrath
Published by Penguin, 1939, 528 pages.Review by Kamakshi Balasubramanian Rereading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath after a gap of nearly 50 years has left me with untold riches. The Grapes of Wrath is not an easy work to summarize, unless one sacrifices many of its uniquely brilliant and always affecting facets. It is a …
Levels of Life: Julian Barnes
Published by Jonathan Cape / Vintage, 2013, 128 pages. “You put two things together that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.” This book is about coming together and moving apart, of soaring to the sky and slipping into the underworld. It begins with balloonists in the late 19th century, then …
Under Milk Wood: Dylan Thomas
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1954, 160 pages. “To begin at the beginning. It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.” Thus begins one of my favourite books, a book of …
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