A literary and cultural blog dedicated to book reviews, literary travel, art, museums, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
My Dear Kabul: A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writing Group is one of the most powerful accounts of contemporary Afghanistan because it tells history through the voices of women living through political catastrophe. Created by twenty-one Afghan women brought together by the organisation Untold Narratives, the […]
The Wonders, by Spanish writer Elena Medel, is a lyrical and deeply moving novel that examines how class, gender, money, and history shape the lives of working-class women across generations in Spain, from the second half of the twentieth century into the first half of the twenty-first century. Through the […]
Francisco Goldman’s The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle is a memoir that blends personal grief, travel writing, journalism, and political commentary. Part travelogue and part reportage on Mexican politics and narco-violence, the book follows Goldman several years after the tragic death of his wife, the writer Aura Estrada, as […]
Originally published in 1977, “They” by Kay Dick (1915 – 2001, often credited as “ the first woman director in English publishing”) is a haunting dystopian novel that explores the gradual destruction of individuality, creativity and freedom of expression. Written as a sequence of interconnected, dreamlike episodes, the novel creates […]
A General Theory of Oblivion by the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa is a novel set against the backdrop of Angola’s turbulent transition from Portuguese colonial rule to independence and civil war. Through the story of Ludovica Fernandes Mano, known as Ludo, Agualusa explores themes of memory, the impact of history on individual lives and its randomness, isolation, loneliness, belonging, identity, family, and the position of women in society.
Mathias Énard’s Compass is one of the most intellectually stimulating novels I have ever read: a hypnotic, melancholic, and erudite meditation on memory, history, love, and cultural identity. Part love story, part cultural essay, and part insomniac stream of consciousness, the novel transforms a single sleepless night in Vienna into […]
All the Beauty in the World has become one of my favourite books I have read in recent years. It is a book that anyone who wants to enrich their experience of visiting museums or galleries should read. This beautiful exploration of grief and art is deeply soul-soothing and offers […]
Berlin has long been a city of paradoxes: restless yet reflective, fractured yet fiercely creative. Its streets carry the echoes of history while offering anonymity to those who walk them, making it a natural setting for stories of solitude. In Berlin, loneliness does not always appear as emptiness, but it […]
Nights at the Alexandra by the Irish writer, William Trevor is a quiet, reflective novella that captures the fragile emotional lives of ordinary people in the small Irish town of Cloverhill. The story unfolds through a series of small, carefully observed moments, revealing how memory, regret, and compassion continue to […]
Written in rich, lyrical prose, The Offing by Benjamin Myers is a quiet, deeply reflective coming-of-age novel that unfolds over a single transformative summer in post-World War II England. The story is framed by an elderly Robert Appleyard looking back on the summer of 1946, when, at just sixteen, he […]