Roma Tearne, who grew up in Sri Lanka, crafts a powerful novel, combining the horrifying violence and brutality of brainwashed boy soldiers and opportunistic power seekers with the sometimes lyrical portrayal of nature and the enduring power of love. Now a painter and film-maker in London, as well as a gifted writer, Tearne makes the fraught atmosphere come alive through almost tactile sense impressions, adding depth to this portrait of Sri Lanka, even as she uses the mosquito symbol to show that beauty, when it can be found, always comes with a price.
Read Full Post »
Heaven’s Edge is unique–it is not a romance, not a war chronicle, not a religious allegory, not a plea for ecological responsibility, and not science fiction, though it contains elements of all these genres. Marc, a young college graduate from London, has returned to an unnamed island, much like the author’s island of Sri Lanka, on a mission to connect with his father’s memory. Mind-numbing violence, brutally perpetrated by the military to remove any question of free thought and independent activity in the population, is the only constant in the lives of the characters, as Gunesekera explores our need to remain connected to our pasts and the ways in which our futures are outgrowths of our pasts. The graphically described violence further sets into sharp relief themes of personal identity, the desire for beauty, and the need to protect and preserve the natural world.
Read Full Post »
Against the backdrop of Palestinian history from 1923 – 1948, Lebanese author Selim Nassib creates the extraordinary love story of passionate, young Golda Meir and Albert Pharoan, a wealthy Arab banker. Pharaon has abandoned the high life of Beirut, along with his wife and children, to live in Haifa, where he is a first-hand observer of the growing Zionist movement, along with the conflicts Zionism creates among the Arab people. From 1929 to 1936, according to legend (corroborated by his family, though not hers), they see each other secretly, reveling in each other’s company even as they are poles apart in their visions for Palestine. Their affair takes place during major policy decisions by the high-powered leaders with whom Golda associates, well described here, but Nassib’s point of view is obviously different from that of most western “founding-of-Israel novels.”
Read Full Post »
Stefan Chwin, a highly acclaimed Polish novelist from Gdansk, for whom this is the first novel translated into English (by Philip Boehm), focuses on Danzig/Gdansk as it adapts to the comings and goings of its changing citizenry during the tumult of post-war 1945. Imbuing the city with the aura of a main character in this darkly impressionistic novel, Chwin shows us that no matter who is officially in control, the city somehow survives, a permanent monument to the endurance of the communal spirit and the ability to adapt. Meticulous descriptions of the smallest aspects of daily life—home furnishings, buildings, neighborhoods, and life at the port—turn the city into a living, breathing entity, battered by changes of fortune, perhaps, but still functioning and still providing a home to a changing population.
Read Full Post »
Retracing the journeys of Captain James Cook, author Tony Horwitz writes a fast-paced, fascinating, and often very humorous account of his “walk” in the footsteps of Captain Cook, an explorer he obviously admires and whom he attempts to understand and make understandable to his readers. Fascinating as a biography of the complex Captain Cook, as a lively record of the age of exploration, as a modern adventure to “romantic” south Pacific islands, and as research on cultural anthropology, this is an exhilarating and fast-paced narrative, one which will reward careful reading and cause the reader to examine the dubious results of “civilization.” Horwitz obviously enjoyed his research, and the reader will, too, however vicariously.
Read Full Post »
