Rebecca Lowe is a British journalist specializing in the Middle East and human rights. Her book, The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East (2022), was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Award 2023. Rebecca has written for the BBC, The Guardian, The Times, …
Continue reading Cycling Across the Middle East: An Interview with Rebecca Lowe
Translated from Bulgarian by Angela RodelPublished by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023, 304 pages. Original version published in 2020. What if there was a way to turn back the clock and live in the past? A geriatric psychiatrist called Gaustine, living in Zurich, believes that patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s can be helped by going into …
Published by Bee Fiction, 2024, 416 pages. “Beneath the thin fabric that packaged families, there were so many tangled threads, little knots of resentment and bundles of unexpressed anger that reveal themselves in unexpected ways. How much energy they spent on hiding them from view, maintaining the fiction of smoothness, of harmony, of normalcy—whatever that …
Translated from German by Robin SmythPublished by Penguin, 1977, 263 pages. Original version published in 1936. “What do men want from me? Why do they pursue me? Why are they so hard? All I am is a perfectly ordinary actor...” Hendrik Höfgen is, first and foremost, an actor. In fact, that could describe him entirely. …
Published by Fourth Estate, 2024, 168 pages Mayang is a young man working for Kashyap, a right-wing content producer in Delhi. Kashyap’s only criteria is to rile people up: there is no question of journalistic integrity or fact-checking. As Kashyap puts it, “To make an impact on the internet you don’t need ideas, you need …
Published by Penguin / Everyman's Library, first published in 1871-72, 364 pages. Welcome to Middlemarch: an English town in the Midlands, during the late 1800s, home to dreamers, idealists, people trying to remake themselves, and people on the make. They represent a cross-section of society: landowners, traders, estate managers, artists, clerics and workers. The people …
Continue reading Middlemarch—A Study of Provincial Life: George Eliot
Published by Anchor Books / Doubleday, 1994, 390 pages. “I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn’t learned that it can happen so gradually you don’t lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. …
Published by Faber & Faber, 2018, 348 pages. A town in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, during the Troubles. A time of suspicion, deep divisions and violence. The unnamed narrator is an 18-year-old woman—referred to only as Middle Sister. She has mapped out a space for herself, staying out of political discussions. She avoids unnecessary …
Published by Hodder, 2014, 385 pages. Rome, 89 AD, during the reign of Emperor Domitian. Valerius Aviola and Mucia Lucilia, a recently married middle-aged couple, are found murdered in their rented ground-floor apartment. It seems to be a burglary gone wrong: a large quantity of silverware was taken, and the porter Nicostratus was badly beaten. …
Published by Manilla Press, 2023, 341 pages. “This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so did I. I left him.“I left him, and now he may be dead. I can see him clearly, exactly as he was this morning, sitting beneath the ancient tree, his eyes …
Talking About Books 