Translated from Japanese by Polly BartonPublished by 4th Estate / Ecco, 2024, 452 pages. Original version published in 2017. Rika Machida is an ambitious journalist working at the Shūmei Weekly. She has been trying to get an exclusive interview with Manako Kajii, a woman being held in the Tokyo Detention House for killing three of …
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The Owl, The River and the Valley: Arupa Patangia Kalita
Translated from Assamese by Mitra PhukanPublished by Penguin, 2025, 338 pages. Stories in the original version published over several years. “Certainly, their parents must have given these women a name. Those names were lost in the river of time. What indeed did they have that would allow them to hold their names firmly in their …
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Weaving Stories: An Interview with Krishna Candeth
Krishna Candeth is an Indian writer, poet and filmmaker. His first novel, All Stray Dogs Go To Heaven, was published in 2023. Before going to New York to study filmmaking at Columbia University, he made several documentary films for Indian Television, including a film on the romance of the monsoon in India; one on how …
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In the Hide—How the Natural World Saved My Life: Gordon Buchanan
Written with Will MillardPublished by Witness Books, 2025, 312 pages “When I was young, if you had granted me one wish, I probably would have chosen to be invisible. If I was invisible, I rationalized, then I could get as close as possible to the earth’s most elusive creatures. Moreover, I could comfortably evade all …
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A Detective in Modern India: An Interview with Tarquin Hall
Tarquin Hall is a British author and journalist. He has written six crime novels featuring Vish Puri (The Case of the Missing Servant, 2009; The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, 2010; The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, 2012; The Case of the Love Commandos, 2013; The Case of the Reincarnated Client, 2019; …
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James: Percival Everett
Published by Random House / Mantle / Picador, 2024, 303 pages “My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. ... I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant …
Stepping through the Looking Glass: A Journey through Speculative Fiction
Photo: SH Design via AdobeStock “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, / ‘To talk of many things: / Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — / Of cabbages — and kings — / And why the sea is boiling hot — / And whether pigs have wings.’”—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding …
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The Haunting Season—Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights
Authors: Bridget Collins, Laura Purcell, Elizabeth Macneal, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Jess Kidd, Natasha Pulley, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, and Andrew Michael HurleyPublished by Sphere, 2021, 293 pages There is something about December that seems to call for ghost stories. So I have picked a collection of eight ghostly tales written by contemporary writers. The stories are …
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Best Books of 2025
Photo: karina_lo via Adobe Stock Another year is almost over, and it’s time to look back at the books we read in 2025. As always, it’s a rich and varied collection. The fiction section includes three Booker Prize longlisted books, including the winner, David Szalay’s Flesh, as well as Tash Aw’s The South and Benjamin …
All Stray Dogs Go To Heaven: Krishna Candeth
Published by BluOne Ink, 2023, 540 pages “We eat our poisons young and then trawl the world the rest of our lives, looking for antidotes.” Humans are intrinsically storytellers, and the stories we tell about ourselves shape who we are. They give form to our world, and each of us carries our own personal world …
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Talking About Books 