Tag: book-review

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Portraits of survival and resilience wins the Booker Prize

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Indian writer, Banu Mushtaq’s fiction Heart Lamp won the International Booker Prize this week. The 77-year-old writer  said “ I never dreamt it could happen. I don’t know how to express my emotions, except to say it is the greatest experience of my life”. Her translator Deepa Bhasthi 41, said “the honour lies in becoming the first translator of colour to win the annual award which goes to the best work of fiction translated into English. splits the £50,000 prize money equally between author and translator. Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 stories Mushtaq  exquisitely captures everyday lives of women and … Continue reading Portraits of survival and resilience wins the Booker Prize

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Hope and despair

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The emotional story of an intense friendship between the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A Leopard-Skin Hat may be the French writer Anne Serre’s most moving novel. Anne Serre is a Prix Goncourt winner who has published 17 novels in French, as postmodern sensuous fairy tale. A feminist fantasy, where women satisfy their sexual needs free from society’s ignominy. The first to be translated into English by Mark Hutchinson, 1992’s The Governesses. Hailed in Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance, with a series of short scenes painting the … Continue reading Hope and despair

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Strange and Dangerous

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Piranesi is a spectacular novel by Susanna Clarke, winner of the Women’s Prize 2021, set in parallel universe made up of hundreds of halls and vestibules lined with statues each on different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid: He understands the tides as he understands the pattern of labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. The vestibules which triggers gradual memory loss and identity in newcomers. The upper level of the house is filled with clouds lower … Continue reading Strange and Dangerous

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The act of Atonement

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Master storyteller, and author of more than 60 bestsellers, Stephen King’s rumours of retirement due to literary exhaustion, is unfounded as his shift of genre from horror to crime after recharging his creative batteries. Never Flinch is about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker – featuring the beloved Holly Gibney. When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in act of atonement of the needless death of an innocent man”. Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea … Continue reading The act of Atonement

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Love in the Therapeutic age

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Tanja and Jerome are navigating a long-distance relationship in a world of constant communication and emotional hyper-reflection. Whether they are texting one another trip updates from midday raves or debating the best trainers in the own-brand aisle of Decathlon, every gesture is controlled and self-aware. This is love in the therapeutic age. Both conform to the archetype: Tanja is a Berlin-based writer whose first book sits somewhere at the intersection of virtual reality and gay romance. “People who didn’t like it came across as cringingly proud of their dislike of a book that meant something to others, “ writes Randt, … Continue reading Love in the Therapeutic age

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Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: the woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. A life of grief and tragedy, love and heartbreak, the nurturing of her superstar daughters, and the perseverance and audacity it takes for a girl from Galveston, Texas to change the world. Why half of Destiny’s Child Beyoncé’s original four piece, left the group in 2000 in a flurry of bad-mouthing and lawsuits: we’re just old that “Beyoncé saw … Continue reading Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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Eternal City, that bring its people to life

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Rome for centuries was an essential stop on the Grand Tour, part of the education of well-born visitors such as the great chronicler of Gilded Age, Edith Wharton.  A collection of short stories, set in Italy, France and America, with powerful portraits of women who live in “the world of propriety” at the turn of century, displaying emotions women feel in love, in jealousy, when they long for children or seek independence – and when their passions lead them to overstep the bounds laid down by exacting conventions. We see too what happens to those strong enough to break the … Continue reading Eternal City, that bring its people to life

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Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel’s novel Still Born, about motherhood, shortlisted fort the 2023, International Booker Prize, “Being a mother means being worried about someone else all the time”, mused its narrator Laura, explaining why she preferred to remain childless. Her latest book The Accidentals feature Mothers and labours of parenthood, where conventions of family life are examined, challenged and subverted. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event are pushed into unfamiliar terrain: a girl encounters her uncle in hospital, who was cast out of the family for reasons unknown, … Continue reading Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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Brief Liaison encounter

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All lives are nothing more than the chronicle of countless stinging might-have-beens that continue to haunt us. In the scorching heat, a hundred people wait to be selected as jurors. Paul, a lawyer reading Wall Street Journal. Catherine, a psychiatrist reading Wuthering Heights. So, begins a whirlwind flirtation over cappuccinos in Manhattan and gallery trips to Chelsea. Paul and Catherine, strike up a conversation and leap to judgements. Catherine thinks she could read him like a book, Wall Street, Park Avenue, Ivy League – arrogant self-satisfied, clearly prejudiced and knows it too. With lawyerly precision, Paul sums her up as … Continue reading Brief Liaison encounter

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Voice to Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless

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Introduction to DARK HOLY GROUND by Linda Granville DARK HOLY GROUND: A Journey into Activism to Give Voice to the Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless is a deeply personal and politically potent memoir from British activist and writer Linda Granville. Set in Middlesbrough, a once-thriving industrial town devastated by deindustrialization and economic abandonment, this book is both a testimony of survival and a call to moral action. Granville’s story begins in the heart of hardship: an unemployed single mother navigating life on society’s margins in a town where iron and steel, shipbuilding and the chemical industry once provided prosperity but now lie … Continue reading Voice to Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless