A literary and cultural blog dedicated to book reviews, literary travel, art, museums, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
“The middle years, when you’re neither young nor old, are fuzzy years. You can no longer see the shore you started from, but you can’t yet get a clear enough view of the shore you’re heading for. You spend these years thrashing about in the middle of a big lake, […]
“She had started to pick some new books and it was a pleasure to see how comfortable she was in the library. She’d pick up the books, leaf them, stroke them, talk to them, and breathe in their odor. Bathed in the soft light spread by the sun as it […]
Katalin Street by the Hungarian writer Magda Szabo was originally published in 1969. This story explores the issues of historic trauma, living with guilt, heavy sorrow, grief wrapped up in solitude and existing in a constant survival mode. This novel also tackles the irreversibility of our actions, emotions and feelings. […]
Literary London delves deep into the literary history of London following in the footsteps of some of the most iconic writers who have lived or visited London. Literary London explains where to find the best literary landmarks in London with the objective to tell the stories behind the stories. We […]
“Central Europe: the maximum diversity in the minimum of space.” “The people of Central Europe are not conquerors. They cannot be separated from European history; they cannot exist outside it; but they represent the wrong side of this history; they are its victims and outsiders. It’s this disabused view of […]
“I’ll never discover where they ended up, no one knows the humble fates of so many people. (…) this entire world is no more than a delusion of my crippled mind. (…) another such world is possible, (…) but a little less heinous.” “I’ve always believed I didn’t come into […]
“The turning point came one day when we were searching the house of someone wed brought in for interrogation. I came across a black and white photograph. On the back, written in pencil, was a place name and a date: April 1940. (…) Women standing in a line on a […]
“From that morning, what’s engraved on my mind (…) it is the shock of how war was conjured, how life collapsed in one fell swoop: civil infighting, the humiliation of hunger, the indignity of it all, our generation’s lost dreams. They split the citizens into two warring camps, leaving the […]
Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi is a collection of ten profoundly moving short stories, written in lyrical and luscious prose underpinned by a variety of subtle emotions. Each story explores themes of loneliness, relationships, connections, misunderstandings, silences, unspoken emotions and feelings, internal turmoil, […]
I have prepared a list of 20 books exploring themes of immigration, belonging and identity related to social class, ethnicity, and nationality. Often the theme of immigration intersects with the theme of belonging and identity. Therefore, I have decided to include all these themes in one list. As usual I […]