A literary and cultural blog dedicated to book reviews, literary travel, art, museums, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
“But life went on anyway. It didn’t finish. Life never finishes, even if someone leaves it.” Life Went On Anyway by a Ukrainian dissident artist, writer, filmmaker, Oleg Sentsov is a collection of autobiographical stories which portray Sentsov’s childhood and growing up in the Crimea during the last years of […]
The Weight of Loss is a beautifully crafted debut novel by an extremely gifted writer, Sally Oliver. The novel offers a profound exploration of a young life shaped by grief, loss, trauma and troubled relationships. It is also a story of how the ordinariness of the reality we inhabit has […]
Adrienne Yabouza is a writer from the Central African Republic (CAR). She worked as a hairdresser for many years in the capital of CAR, Bangui. Currently Adrienne dedicates her time to writing books for children and adults in French, Sango, Yakoma, and Lingala. As a young woman she fled the […]
Sunken City by the Italian writer, Marta Barone is a spellbinding noir-memoir exploring the meaning of personal memory versus historical records, family relationships especially those between fathers and daughters, the quest for one’s roots, nostalgia for missed opportunities and relationships with the backdrop of contemporary and especially the 1970s Italy. […]
I remember reading Stoner by John Williams about a decade ago, when it was republished here in the UK—almost forty years after its original publication in the USA. It had a huge impact on me. When Stoner was first published in 1965, it sold only two thousand copies and failed […]
Lucky Breaks by Ukrainian writer and photojournalist, Yevgenia Belorusets in translation of Eugene Ostashevsky is a collection of vignettes accompanied by a series of black and white photos taken by the author herself and placed carefully within the text. Even though these photographs do not illustrate any of the events […]
“Sometimes, when faced with an unexpected crossroads in life, we discover that for years we have been walking a tightrope, with no knowledge of whether we are stepping out over a void, or if there is anything – or anyone- strong enough to catch us underneath. And we realise that […]
Grey Bees by the great Ukrainian writer, Andrey Kurkov has become one of my all-time favourite books and its protagonist, one of the most beautiful solitary characters I have encountered in literature, Sergey Sergeyich is someone I would love to set off on a journey with across free, independent Ukraine […]
Reputation is a compelling crime novel providing a nuanced social and cultural commentary on a modern society. While I was reading Reputation by Sarah Vaughan, I could not stop thinking about a Labour MP Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by the man who was shouting ‘Britain First’, and […]
I have read a few books by the great Ukrainian writer, Andrey Kurkov in the past. Each of them deserves a wider audience especially these days. His books are an emphatic reflection of the Ukrainian soul. Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov is an original book which is worth […]