March 2020 Reading Roundup
Overall, it was a very good month of reading for me. Books, as usual, were the lifeboats I ran for when things got tough outside.
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 soon-to-be-published English translation, I can see why. The short stories in this collection by Natalia Borges…
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 the questions posed by The Sound of the Mountain, a beautifully quiet but powerful book by Nobel Prize…
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 reading for me. Here’s a roundup of the books I’ve read in February. The Sound of the Mountain…
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 it took me from a Cretan classic to a medieval poet, via some self-help literature, a road-trip novel,…
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 the Skverer Hasidim—an escape that ultimately costs him his relationship with his wife and kids. But…
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 a week, which is OK for me. It was a busy year in many ways, and I didn’t…
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 appeared on the nightly news with images of corpses, rubble, wailing widows and intrepid reporters ducking as a…
German Literature Month: The Weight of Things by Marianne Fritz
German Literature Month happens every November, and usually I remember about it some time in December. This year, though, I’m taking part for the second year in a row! After my review of Austerlitz last year, here are my thoughts…