A literary and cultural blog dedicated to book reviews, literary travel, art, museums, and thoughtful reading across borders and cultures.
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes) captures the soul of the modern globalised and culturally homogenised society shaped by the constant flow of online images available on the internet which promises the purposeful and uncomplicated life. The reality however does not always live up to these pictures. The […]
I recorded a few snapshots of my London life during the month of March. In the video you will see Gordon Square and Reading Room at Welcome Collection in Bloomsbury where I often have my lunch breaks, my afternoon and evening walks in Soho, Trafalgar Square and Russell Square. My […]
“(…) nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human – the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques – was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off.” The […]
“Berlin is a city condemned forever to becoming and never to being.” Karl Scheffler, 1910 At the end of February I spent a few days in Berlin. On my first day I wandered the streets of Berlin, saw the Brandenburg Gate by day and night, visited Friedrich Strasse, Holocaust Memorial, […]
I have prepared a short list of books by Egyptian authors exploring the texture of the Egyptian society throughout various eras of the 20th century and early 21st century which I hope you will find useful and interesting. 1 Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi Woman at Point […]
Traces of Enayat by the Egyptian writer Iman Mersal was published in 2019 and tells a story of another Egyptian female writer, Enayat Al-Zayyat who committed suicide at the age of 26 in 1963. She only wrote one book called Love and Silence which initially rejected for publication but later […]
[dates in the brackets indicate the dates of the reign] A few weeks ago I went to see the beautiful exhibition dedicated to the Great Mughal art that traces the evolution of this distinctive art that flourished in the 16th and 17th century under the reign of three Mughal emperors. […]
One Saturday I went to Tate Britain. It was a lovely visit. I forgot how beautiful Tate Britain is inside. I love their collection of Turner’s paintings. I recorded my visit and I hope you will enjoy it.
A few weeks ago I went to see the exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. I then visited one of the oldest and most beautiful bookstores in London called Hatchards, right across the street from the Royal Academy. After browsing through some […]
I decided to spend one day in York which is around two and half hours away from London by train. I left London very early and travelled across the misty hills and fields of North England. The city was covered in the mist when I arrived. It was such a […]