Exit West by Mohsin Hamid | Book Review
“(…) but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind”. “(..) to love is to enter into the inevitability of one day being able to protect what is most valuable to you”. “We are all migrants through time”. […]
Invictus by W.E. Henley | Reflections
“Out of the night that covers me,Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms […]
A House of My Own: Stories from My Life by Sandra Cisneros | Book Review
“I feel fortunate at least to open books and be invited to step in, if that book shelters me and keeps me warm, I know I’ve come home”. “I’m fascinated with how those of us who live in multiple cultures and the regions in between are held under the spell […]
Alone by Edgar Allan Poe | Reflections
“From childhood’s hour I have not beenAs others were—I have not seenAs others saw—I could not bringMy passions from a common spring.From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow; I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone;And all I loved, I loved alone.Then—in my childhood—in the […]
French Lessons by Alice Kaplan | Book Review
“I have been willing to overlook in French culture what I would not accept in my own for the privilege of living in translation”. French Lessons by Alice Kaplan is an interesting book. The author elaborates on such themes as living life through an acquired language and its impact on […]
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov | Book Review
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is one of my favourite books I have ever read. This book holds a special place in my heart as it depicts beautifully with all the necessary nuances the most important characteristics related to Russia and Eastern Europe during the course of the […]
Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano | Book Review
‘Honeymoon’ by Patrick Modiano is an evocative, melancholic tale, and, at times, it resembles a frame from “film noir” of the 1950s. Modiano presents the lives of the protagonists from the point of an observer, never depicting the reality in a straightforward manner, but rather showing different angles, playing with […]
Melmoth by Sarah Perry | Book Review
Melmoth by Sarah Perry is a tale of moral complexity related to the human condition. Perry’s book draws upon Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin written in 1820 which once was a well-read book with a greater significance. Perry retells the legend of Melmoth, the loneliest being in this […]
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine | Book Review
“I would be reading at my desk, something she deemed part and parcel of my job, and considerate as she was, she kept me company but left me undisturbed. We were two solitudes benefiting from a grace that was continuously reinvigorated in each other’s presence, two solitudes who nourished each […]
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak | Book Review
“The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us.” “We must do what we can to […]