Reading

“The Writer as Migrant” by Ha Jin

These are three essays on the notion of migration for the writer, mostly explained through other writers such as Nabokov, Conrad, Kundera and Naipaul. In the first essay, The Spokesman & the Tribe, Jin explores the balance between the individual…
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“The Iron Duke” by L. Ron Hubbard

I don’t generally read this kind of thing, but it was given away free by a very nice lady on the L. Ron Hubbard stand at the London Book Fair earlier this year. I don’t like to write anything off…
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“Birchwood” by John Banville

This book has very clear echoes of Proust, both in the writing style and in the sense of nostalgia that pervades the story of aristocratic decline. The references are clear and deliberate – in the very first chapter, Banville’s narrator…
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End of the sea code

Saw this very sad snippet of news in the 29 August edition of Freedom magazine: At least 73 migrants have died at sea after ships repeatedly passed them by despite their being in difficulty after their dinghy ran out of…
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“Fire Horses” by Mark Liam Piggott

Joe Noone seems to have it all – a beautiful house built into a Mallorca hillside, a comfortable lifestyle, a beautiful girlfriend. Yet it’s New Year’s Eve 2007 and as fireworks go off around him and people celebrate, he seems…
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