Review of Border by Kapka Kassabova
Have you ever read a book that seemed to contain all the right ingredients but somehow failed to live up to your expectations? That's how I felt after reading Border by Kapka Kassabova.
Review: Electric Arches by Eve L. Ewing
"This book is about my life and maybe also your life. And it is about the places we invent. Every story in it is absolutely true."
“H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald: Review
H is for Hawk is a beautiful evocation of grief and the way in which the sudden death of a loved on can rip away your sense of control over the world, reminding you that you are powerless in the…
“Tram 83” by Fiston Mwanza Mujila: Review
It isn't every day that you get to read a Congolese novel in English. In fact, the last time it happened, the country was still called Zaire. Tram 83 is an innovative literary novel that also deals with issues like…
“In Praise of Hatred” by Khaled Khalifa: Review
The transition from childhood to adulthood can often be tough. It must be even harder when you're a teenage girl in Syria who feels drawn to radical Islamist ideology but also has forbidden lesbian fantasies about her best friend.
On the violence of borders
I recently visited Ceuta, a piece of the north African coast that belongs to Spain and is hence part of “Europe”. It was a very strange and disturbing experience to cross that border so easily just by showing my British passport,…
The Russian Window by Dragan Velikic: Review
When I was in Belgrade a while back, I bought four novels in a wonderful bookshop on the main street, Knez Mihailova. They were all literary novels by Serbian writers, translated into English. One thing they all had in common was…
Review of Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones
Did you know that there’s an Albanian tradition in which, if there are no male heirs, a woman can choose to become a man, as long as she swears herself to virginity for life? Neither did I until I read Sworn…
Completism
Can you recommend a good book by an author whose surname begins with Q, U, X or Y? It’s a strange question, I know. The thing is, I’ve been documenting all the books I’ve reviewed on this site since it…