Amora by Natalia Borges Polesso: Review
Amora won several major literary prizes when it was first published in Brazil several years ago, and having just got my hands on the…
The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata: Review
Are you responsible for the sins and failures of your adult children? If so, what do you do about it? These are…
February 2020 Reading Roundup
From Japanese literature to the history of Serbia via the aftermath of war in Sierra Leone, this has been a good month’s…
Is It a Good Idea to Frustrate Your Readers’ Expectations?
I was interviewed recently for a podcast by book blogger Charlie Place, and her perceptive questions got me thinking about my writing.…
January 2020 Reading Roundup
The first month of the year took me from Greece to Serbia via Vienna (don’t ask!), and in the world of books…
Shulem Deen’s Powerful Memoir of Hasidic Life
All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen is a powerful account of the author’s escape from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect known as…
2019: My Year of Full-Time Travel
As regular readers may know, I’ve been travelling full-time with my wife Genie since the beginning of 2015. We don’t have a…
Best Books I Read in 2019
How was your reading year? I read 58 books overall, which was not as many as I’d hoped, but still about one…
Inside the Syrian Conflict With Jonathan Littell
Homs is one of those places that, like Aleppo and Kandahar and Mosul, has become a byword for suffering. For years it…