A couple of years ago, when I turned the last page of Tonke Dragt’s The Letter for the King, I felt like I had travelled back in time. I felt I had mingled with knights on horses, visited medieval forts, and met quirky characters that made my head spin, along the way. I felt rejuvenated...
If there’s anything I love better than chocolate it’s a deliciously atmospheric crime/mystery novel. So, it is with great anticipation that I began reading The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo. To add to my excitement the locked room mystery came with a heritage. Originally published in 1946, it is the first book in the renowned...
Before I started living in Ireland, I had no real notion of seasonal changes other than what I read in books. In Bangalore, the weather was always perfect. Pleasant, breezy, warm, sweet. Travelling helped me experience different kinds of weather, from snow to torrid rain to extreme heat. But I had never been in a...
Many books have been written about gender inequality and misogyny. But perhaps none in the style of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. Cho Nam-Joo’s novel’s titular character’s name literally means Jane Doe in Korean, and it’s a powerful story about the place of women in South Korean society. Kim Jiyoung is an everywoman but one who...
You know those books that just seem to wrap their arms around you in a warm, soul-enriching embrace? That is what Katie O’Neill’s “The Tea Dragon Festival” did for me. Set in a gentle, loving world where dragons are protective of humans and everyone looks out for everyone else in more ways than one, The...
It’s around the first week of April that I begin to see the light. When I wake up at 6.00 am and draw the curtains to see the soft light of dawn beginning to spread across purple skies. Skies that remained dark most of the time until then given the short winter hours. It is...
Ever since I can remember I have enjoyed reading translated books. I loved these words that showed me life on foreign shores. They were like whispers from another world telling me to open my eyes wider and see the world. I cannot pinpoint when and how exactly I started reading these translations. Perhaps it was...
What do you do when you are ambitious but don’t have the skills? You steal, of course. You do anything to achieve your goal, and everything including people become the means to an end. That’s what Maurice Swift does in John Boyne’s latest “A Ladder to the Sky.” We first meet the devastatingly handsome Maurice...
Studio Ghibli’s movie “Grave of the Fireflies” about a brother and sister who try to survive during WWII in Japan is one of my favourite movies. But the fact that it was based on a short story by acclaimed Japanese novelist Akiyuki Nosaka got lost somewhere in the massive shadow of the Ghibli brand. I...
I was absolutely mesmerized by Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, and it was with great expectation that I picked up Circe, a book that has been wowing most readers since its release. The story follows the rise of Circe, daughter of Helios, the sun god, from a mere nymph to being a powerful sorceress....
