Much-lauded memoir of growing up in a secretive and rapidly changing Albania in the 1980 and 1990s
Tag Archives: book review
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
Emotionally manipulative Afghanistan-set tale of tragedy and redemption
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (1907-48, Turkey)
A classic Turkish novella largely set in Weimar Berlin
A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (Austria)
A quietly life-affirming study of the passage from childhood to old age of an unassuming man, shortlisted for the International Booker
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)
Review no 162 Book 5 of my #20booksofsummer The God of Small Things is one of those books that everyone reading this will have heard of, but I don’t suppose everyone will have read. It won the Booker Prize in 1997 and rapidly became the biggest-selling work of Indian fiction by a non-expat writer. Arundhati …
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Review no 130: The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha (Indonesia)
a choose your own adventure book from Indonesia
Review no 124: The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt)
A wide-ranging, best-selling novel set in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt that is more socially conservative than it thinks it is
Review no 92: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Vietnam)
Poetic auto fiction from Ocean Vuong
Review no 46: Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy (Antigua and Barbuda)
AMERICAS AND THE CARIBBEAN This was a very enjoyable, quick read. The novel (published in 1990) starts off as an engaging coming of age story about a girl from the West Indies arriving in North America as an au pair, although Lucy’s resentment and anger become increasingly evident as the book progresses. The book reads …
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Imogen is Reading and Watching the World: On Books, Film, Art & More 