by Geetanjali Shree translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell ‘What is a border? It’s something that surrounds an existence, it is a person’s perimeter. No matter how large, no matter how small.’ Tomb of Sand, which won this year’s International Booker Prize, is about borders - and about crows. Crows, I hear some readers …
Category: literary prizewinners
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell 'A boy is coming down a flight of stairs. The passage is narrow and twists back on itself. He takes each step slowly....' After The Tale of Genji, Hamnet is a nice, easy read. Based on the life, and death, of the only son of William Shakespeare, it is a fictionalised account …
Breathing New Life into the Classics
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller The epic poems of Homer always bear retelling. Whether in the original format or recast in one of the many variations that have appeared over the centuries, these stories of kings, heroes, gods and goddesses have the power to stir the imagination. Occasionally, a new version appears which …
Death in Venice
by Thomas Mann A Review 'Cases of recovery were rare; eighty out of a hundred of those infected died, and in a horrid way, for the disease struck with savagery and often presented itself as the most severe "dry form".' Usually regarded by scholars and critics as a novella, Death in Venice has the characteristics …
A Fisherman's Tale
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway '....nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat.' His name is Santiago, and we are left to guess his age. What is …
Bookheathen Scribblings 