Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.Published by Penguin / Perennial, 1970, 432 pages. Original version published in 1967.Review by Sergio Sandoval Fonseca This year bibliophiles around the world celebrate 50 years of book life for “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967), a novel that pioneered a new genre, gave its author, García Márquez “Gabo”, the …
Continue reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude”: New Readings 50 Years After?
Published by Eamon Dolan / Mariner Books, 2015, 464 pages. Like Paul Theroux, travellers often go in search of adventure in other countries before exploring their own. Having travelled to remote corners throughout the world, he sets out to discover a part of his own country—the United States—that he knows mostly through its fiction. The …
Continue reading Deep South—Four Seasons on Back Roads: Paul Theroux
Published by Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 2017, 464 pages.Review by Usha Raman and Suroor Alikhan Below is a review in two voices—much as the book is a story told through several. Differentiated less by opinion than typeface. I opened my pre-ordered copy of "The Ministry..." with a bit of trepidation mixed with skepticism. Like many …
Continue reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Arundhati Roy
Published by Orion, 2000, 496 pages. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book in the Rebus series, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed them. The books are set in Edinburgh, which is a character in its own right. Ian Rankin knows the city well, from the posh part with the big houses …
Published by Harper, 1998, 256 pages. Dictionary: A book which explains usually in alphabetic order, the words of a language, giving for each word its typical spelling, an explanation of its meaning or meanings, and often other information, such as pronunciation, etymology, synonyms and illustrative examples. The Oxford English Dictionary is one of the most …
The Underground Railroad published by Doubleday / Random House, 2016, 320 pages.Killers of the Flower Moon published by Random House, 2016, 352 pages.Review by Usha Raman Strange fruit—the title of a song by Billie Holliday that's been playing on my car stereo, and I can't get it out of my mind...nor can I get the images …
Translated from Vietnamese by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPhersonPublished by Penguin / William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993, 274 pages. Original version published in 1988. It seems like a lot of the stories about Viet Nam are about the war, and that too from the American perspective. The country itself seems to disappear, merely providing a …
Translated from French by Bhakti Shringarpure and Sara C. HanaburghPublished by Indiana University Press, 2016, 246 pages. Original version published in 2006. This novel is set in an unnamed African country and starts against a backdrop of civil unrest. The head of the secret service, Col. Asante Kroma, is looking for the deposed president, N’Zo …
Translated from Sanskrit by Arshia SattarPublished by Penguin, 1996, 320 pages. The original stories were written between 1063 to 1081. Kathasaritsagara can be translated as the “ocean of the sea of stories”. This is the mother lode of stories, composed by Somadeva around 1070 CE for the Kashmiri queen, Suryavati. But many of these had …
Translated from German by Joel AgeePublished by University of Chicago Press / Pushkin Vertigo, 1959, 192 pages. Original version published in 1958. The book starts with the narrator travelling to Chur in Switzerland to give a lecture on the art of writing detective stories. The talk is not a success, and the writer meets Dr. …
Talking About Books 