A literary and cultural journal exploring books, art, museums, literary travel, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
I have recently spent a few days in Paris to deal with personal matters. I found some time in-between to walk around Paris. I created a few walking videos to keep the record of my memories. I have been to Paris many time before and I have already done all […]
“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 […]
Last September I went to visit the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, a site of former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp during WW2. I took this short video during my last video. Emotionally it was difficult for me to film inside the blocks. I mostly captured the outside area. At […]
I hope you all are doing well. I recently went for a peaceful walk around Hampstead Heath in North London. I love taking nature walks to find a way for me to stop, to breathe, to seek out the wondrous moments in the present. This is a form of therapy […]
Michel the Giant by the Togolese writer and adventurer, Tete-Michel Kpomassie is an extraordinary book about a long journey that Michel took from his home in Togo via Europe to reach Greenland, the land of eternal ice he had become fascinated with as a child and dreamt of visiting. In 1950s when he […]
Sanmao belongs to the 20th century most iconic women. She was a writer, traveler, and university teacher born in China in 1943 and then raised in Taiwan. As an adult she travelled extensively across Spain, Germany, Central America and spent a few years living in the Western Sahara where she […]
I hope you all are doing well. I would like to share with you a few book recommendations with the Inspirational Female Protagonists. These are characters dealing with loneliness in its various forms, trauma, ageing, poverty, life within strict religious and social norms, no opportunities for ‘better’ life. I have […]