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Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Forget the guide book: Immerse yourself in these location-based novels
ITALY I always like to match my reading to my trips. I'm back with Elena Ferrante for an upcoming holiday in Naples, and loving the simmer of Italian heat, culture and family life throughout the Neapolitan Novels. As a long-term EM Forster fan, I'd say that A Room with a View is perfect for gorgeous first impressions on Florence, mixed with depth, humour and clandestine love. Elizabeth Bowen 's Italian stories, scattered through the Collected Stories, are divine, full of boating on lakes and individualistic characters rubbing along badly. One of my favourite Bowen novels, The Hotel, is set on the Italian Riviera, and features her usual collection of snobs, maverick young ladies, odd encounters and stunning descriptions. Sharper than Forster, she conjures the light and leisure of Italian holidays perfectly. Nuala O'Connor Nuala O'Connor's latest novel is Seaborne (New Island) An exceptional memoir of a year in Rome is André Aciman 's My Roman Year. In 1966, teenager André was a refugee from Alexandria, a victim of President Nasser's campaign to 'Arabise' Egypt. He hates Rome initially, but gradually falls in love with the city, first with the historical centre, but also with the less picturesque parts – and with various Romans. With André you cycle around the city, you gasp at the sudden dramatic appearance of the Colosseum in the bus window, you savour the smell of bergamot. Even if you're not in the eternal city. But it would be wonderful to read it while there. Heading to Trieste? Nothing is better than Jan Morris 's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. All her travel books are brilliant. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's latest book is Selected Stories (Blackstaff Press) READ MORE UNITED STATES Music-loving visitors to the United States will enjoy Imani Perry 's Black in Blues, a remarkably beautiful book exploring black culture from Thelonius Monk to Toni Morrison. Bob Dylan 's Chronicles: Volume One is not only the best book about Bob Dylan, it is the best book about New York. Other masterful evocations of the Apple include Frank O'Hara 's Lunch Poems and Patti Smith 's Just Kids. The United States' greatest wordsmiths have been songwriters, and most had immigrant roots. As your flight crosses the Atlantic, it would be lovely to listen to Van Morrison 's stunning new album, Remembering Now, a moving and thrilling memoir that unfurls into glorious life the soul, blues, jazz and gospel that have been the United States' richest artistic gifts, the soundtrack of its better angels. Joseph O'Connor Joseph O'Connor's latest novel is The Ghosts of Rome (Harvill Secker) NETHERLANDS I became a fan of Gerbrand Bakker when I read The Twin about 10 years ago. His new novel The Hairdresser's Son (also translated by David Colmer) examines loneliness and grief as quiet-living Simon puzzles over the long-standing mystery of his father's disappearance. William Golding's The Lord of the Flies regularly appears on '100 best books' lists, and for its 70th anniversary, in 2024, the Dutch illustrator and author Aimée de Jongh reimagined it as a beautiful and evocative graphic novel. De Jongh's version celebrates the original text yet is also entirely original and fresh. Set in the Dutch countryside in 1961, Yael van der Wouden 's Women's Prize-winning debut, The Safekeep , is both a psychological thriller and love story, a marvellously unsettling portrait of desire, possessiveness and the creep of obsession. Henrietta McKervey Henrietta McKervey's latest novel is A Talented Man (Hachette Books Ireland) FRANCE The writing of the Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux tracks her experiences as a working-class woman and offers a more prosaic version of France than we are used to. Try Happening to begin with. Leila Slimani 's Goncourt-winning Lullaby was a shocking novel about a nanny who kills the children in her care, but it also examines the Parisian bourgeoisie, class divisions and the dilemma of domestic labour in the age of equality. Hervé Le Tellier 's The Anomaly is a mind-bending speculative mystery that sees a planeful of people duplicated during a storm. Le Tellier explores the different paths the duplicate characters' lives take, and what it might mean. This too won the Prix Goncourt. Finally, the crime writer Clémence Michallon 's The Quiet Tenant is a psychological thriller about a woman held captive by a serial killer. Edel Coffey Edel Coffey's latest novel is In Her Place (Sphere) PORTUGAL José Saramago 's career can be roughly divided into pre-Nobel, when his novels intimately examined Portuguese history, and post-Nobel, when they evolved into less geographically specific parables. His sole work of nonfiction, Journey to Portugal, translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor, is a fine meditative travelogue set in post-Salazar Portugal in 1979. The other giant of contemporary Portuguese literature is António Lobo Antunes . A trained psychiatrist who spent three years as an army medic in the colonial war in Angola, Lobo Antunes is one of literature's greatest living stylists, a radiographer of late-20th century Portugal, especially the messy reflux of decolonisation. A good starting point is his 1988 novel, The Return of the Caravels, translated by Gregory Rabassa. Fernando Pessoa 's 'autobiography without facts', The Book of Disquiet, translated by Richard Zenith, might be a hackneyed suggestion, but few books capture the essence of a city for a visitor so well as it does of Lisbon. Oliver Farry Oliver Farry is a foreign correspondent and book reviewer CROATIA I firmly believe that, had she not died in 2018, Dasa Drndic would feature in the Nobel conversation today. Monumental novels such as Trieste (translated by Ellen Elias Bursac), Belladonna and EEG (translated by Celia Hawkesworth) encapsulate so much about personal and European history in the 20th century and resonate loudly today. Exciting younger writers have also broken through. Tea Tulic 's debut novel, Hair Everywhere, translated by Coral Petkovich, is surprising and tender in depicting a family upended by cancer. Olja Savicevic has had two excellent novels translated into English: Farewell, Cowboy and Singer in the Night (both translated by Celia Hawkesworth). Those looking to lose themselves in an epic historical family saga should certainly look out for The Brass Age by Slobodan Snajder (also translated by Celia Hawkesworth). Rónán Hession Rónán Hession's latest novel is Ghost Mountain (Bluemoose) SPAIN Spain is associated with light, colour and the pleasures of the palate. It is also a country that suffered a devastating civil war in the 20th century and decades of dictatorship. The tensions and legacies from that period are still present in contemporary Spanish society. Javier Marías , who died in 2022, was one of the most perceptive and able chroniclers of the deep divisions in Spain that resulted from the brutal repression and all-pervasive surveillance of the fascist years. In novels such as The Infatuations (2013), Thus Bad Begins (2016), Berta Isla (2018) and Tomás Nevinson (2021), Marías offers a forensic exploration of how a society is indelibly marked by political violence and by the consequent temptations of compliance and betrayal. One of the enduring delights of Marías's writing is his utterly distinctive voice, which at once draws the reader into his sensitive and richly detailed description of his home country. Michael Cronin Michael Cronin is professor of French at Trinity College Dublin For Lanzarote, you could do much worse than grab Margaret Drabble 's The Dark Flood Rises, which is largely set on that island. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne GREECE I recently researched a novel set in Greece that I didn't write, so I have ideas, with the caveat that these are anglophone books about living in Greece rather than Greek literature in translation. Sofka Zinovieff 's Eurydice Street is an attentive, observant account of moving to Athens with a young family. Charmian Clift 's two memoirs, Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus, will take you to Hydra in the 1960s with Leonard Cohen passing through. Patrick Leigh Fermor 's Letters invite you to a bohemian English villa, under construction and then hosting European artists and writers, in postwar Kardamyli. And of course there are the Durrell brothers – Lawrence for preference. Sarah Moss Sarah Moss's latest novel is Ripeness (Picador) MALTA Brian Blouet 's The Story of Malta (Ninth Edition), first published in 1967, remains the best introduction to the intriguing history of this country, from the wonders of its neolithic temples to its successive colonisation by different groups, most famously the Knights of St John, who defended it from the Ottomans in a famous 1565 siege. Blouet, coincidentally a neighbour of mine when I was growing up, first came to Malta as an RAF pilot in the 1950s, when it was still part of the British Empire. Malta might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of queer history, but Beloved Malta: Stories of Sexual and Gender Identity offers a riveting alternative history of the country that is ironically enabled by the immaculate records kept by the Knights of St John. Today Malta is one of the most LGBTQ-friendly countries in the world despite the persistent influence of the Catholic Church. Daniel Geary Daniel Geary is professor of American history at Trinity College Dublin MEXICO I loved You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue , translated by Natasha Wimmer. It's zippy and humid, which makes it ideal for when the sun is getting to you. The twists and turns of its paragraphs and sentences mimic not just the palaces where its characters – Cortés, Moctezuma and a cohort of conquistadores having a bad trip – find themselves lost but also the dreamy unfurling of the alternative history that it narrates. I won't spoil what happens, but if you read it on holidays in Mexico you'll look up from the end of it with a heartbroken ache at what you see around you. 'Plot twist' doesn't cover it: it's more enigmatic than that – a wrenching of the mood, maybe. Really quite something. Might ruin the holiday, albeit in a fruitful way. Tim MacGabhann Tim MacGabhann's latest book is The Black Pool: A Memoir of Forgetting (Sceptre) AUSTRALIA In case we begin to believe that Australia is a country with a few big cities let us remind ourselves that it is a continent only slightly smaller than Europe, so clearly a few books won't cover it. But it is far away, so if you're undergoing the journey, you can read many books. I'd suggest The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes for a drenching in essential history, and True Stories, or Everywhere I Look, by Helen Garner , one of Australia's great essayists – and there are many. I've said before that her work is put together with sentences that begin on the low ground but rise into expressions of joy, marvellous pictures as clear as a well-dusted photo album. I'd pack any anthology of short stories, because they have the capacity to illuminate in shades; be sure they include some of the more modern work, including those of First Nations voices. In fact, sorting books for the journey – did I say long journey? – is part of the pleasure. Include some poetry; that's for somewhere over the ocean spread, when you've asked yourself 'Why am I here?' while realising that, all things considered, it does make sense to travel to Australia by ship. You could then have Jon Cleary for dessert. Although not considered a literary gem, his Scobie Malone thrillers give a well-crafted glimpse into suburban Australian life, its concerns and foibles. Evelyn Conlon Evelyn Conlon's latest book is After the Train: Irishwomen United and a Network of Change (UCD Press), edited with Rebecca Pelan BULGARIA Usually when I visit a country I like to read some of its classic works. If you're heading to the Black Sea, why not read Ivan Vazov 's Under the Yoke, a passionate, rather sentimental novel about the Bulgarian fight for freedom in the late 19th century? You'll get it on your ereader. And the contemporary writer Georgi Gospodinov 's The Physics of Sorrow will give you an insight into more recent times in that intriguing country. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne TURKEY 'From a very young age, I suspected there was more to my world than I could see: somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, in a house resembling ours, there lived another Orhan so much like me that he could pass for my twin, even my double.' So begins Orhan Pamuk 's Istanbul: Memories and the City, translated by Maureen Freely, an enchanting memoir that's both scholarly and confessional. Drawing on a broad range of writers, from Baudelaire to Resat Ekrem Kocu, Pamuk evokes the city's complex history and politics, its derelict grandeur and collective melancholy – hüzün – weaving in his own coming-of-age story amid Istanbul's post-imperial decay. Ruby Eastwood Ruby Eastwood is a postgraduate student at Trinity College Dublin and a book reviewer
Washington Post
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
From the author of ‘Call Me by Your Name,' three dreamlike romances
What is this thing called love? André Aciman's signature preoccupation permeates the salt-scented languor of 'Room on the Sea,' his new collection of three novellas. Each story contemplates the often tenuous link between love and time, how out of step the two can feel. Aciman explores this electric tension by interrupting his protagonists' daily routines with, variously, a holiday, jury duty and an academic fellowship. Italy, with its shimmering coasts, coffee and simple cuisine, serves as a point of contact with 'shadow-lives waiting in the wings' throughout the book.
The Herald Scotland
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'One of the most unusual and powerful books I've read'
Allen Lane, £20 One of the most unusual and powerful books I've read in a long time. Chinese Canadian-British writer Alice Mah is Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Red Pockets – the red envelopes used in China to give money to family and clan members – describes her return to her ancestral village in South China, and the reverberations of that disturbing visit. In a soul-searching narrative that charts her escalating despair over the global climate emergency, she addresses the ways in which the world's plight is connected with unresolved issues from the past. Drawing on the cultural and economic histories of China, Canada, England, and Scotland, Mah navigates her own fretful response to her family history and her fears for the future. Clear-eyed and sensitive, Red Pockets is a moving and imaginative memoir of facing up to the wrongs of the past, at the same time asking what we owe to previous generations, and to those who will inherit this planet from us. A Granite Silence Nina Allan Riverrun, £20 A Granite Silence by Nina Allan (Image: Rivverrun) The murder in Aberdeen in 1934 of eight-year-old Helen Priestly horrified the nation and had a shattering impact on the overcrowded tenement community where she lived. In this closely researched account, Nina Allan creatively explores the many elements exposed by this dreadful crime. Wild Fictions Amitav Ghosh Faber & Faber, £25 In the run-up to the Iraq War, Indian-born novelist Amitav Ghosh clashed with a well-known American editor, who refused to see the USA as anything but a benign and altruistic force. In the years since, he has produced a drawerful of highly-researched pieces, now brought together in this collection. Covering some of the most pressing subjects in recent decades, from 9/11, the ongoing legacy of imperialism, Hurricane Katrina, the refugee crisis, and disasters such as the 2004 Indonesian tsunami - the natural and the political cannot be separated, he argues - this is an unflinching portrait of our times from a refreshingly original perspective. Room on the Sea André Aciman Faber & Faber, £12.99 Room on the Sea by André Aciman (Image: Faber & Faber) Meeting while awaiting jury selection, New Yorkers Paul and Catherine covertly take stock of each other. She reading Wuthering Heights, he looking every inch the dapper Wall Street type. What starts as nothing more than a brief encounter becomes more serious, and soon a life-changing decision must be faced. André Aciman is a romantic with a melancholy soul and an eye for detail that makes his fiction read as if real. Of Thorn and Briar Paul Lamb Simon & Schuster, £20 "It is during the shortening days of the autumn months, when the September mists return and the morning dew settles on the pastures once more, that the hedger begins his work." So writes Paul Lamb, for 30 years a hedgelayer in the west country, who lives in a converted horse box. An enlightening and beautifully told monthly journal of following an ancient craft, and the benefits it brings to the countryside. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking Our Relationship with the Countryside Patrick Galbraith William Collins, £22 According to popular belief, access to the countryside in England is highly restricted, while in Scotland, with its Right To Roam legislation, the situation is idyllic. In this hard-hitting account, Patrick Galbraith sets out to destroy the clichés surrounding this inflammatory subject. Making a point of talking to "people who are often forgotten" - among them salmon poachers on the Isle of Lewis, grassroots activists, and much-loathed landowners - he shows that land access is much more nuanced than provocative headlines suggest. Not only are things far from perfect here, but in England there is better access than many people realise. Galbraith's informed and passionate analysis of those tussling over the land is essential reading for anyone with opinions on the countryside. Back in the Day Oliver Lovrenski Trans. Nichola Smalley Hamish Hamilton, £14.99 Back in the Day by Oliver Lovrenski (Image: Hamish Hamilton) On publication in Norway in 2023, Oliver Lovrenski's debut novel Back in the Day swiftly became a bestseller. Norway's Trainspotting is a deep dive into the chaos, terror, and black humour of teenagers locked in a cycle of deprivation. Ivor and Marco, who live in Oslo, have been on the downward slope since they were 13 when they started getting high. At 14 they were dealing drugs, and a year later began carrying knives. This bleak tale, told with brio, offers a fresh take on what it is to be young in an environment where a positive future is but a dream. The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini and a Murder That Haunts History Thomas Harding Michael Joseph, £22 Robert Einstein, Albert's cousin, lived with his family in a villa near Florence. One summer's day in 1944, while he was safely in hiding, a unit of soldiers arrived at the villa. When they left, 12 hours later, Robert's wife and children were dead. Their murder has never been solved, but in this scrupulously researched account, Thomas Harding takes on this notorious case, asking who ordered the killings, and why was no-one brought to account? The Eights Joanna Miller Fig Tree, £16.99 In 1920 Oxford University finally admitted female undergraduates. Joanna Miller's debut novel follows a group of young women, all living in rooms on Corridor Eight, who become close friends. From varied backgrounds - privileged, hard-up, politically engaged - all are hopeful of what lies ahead. All, too, are scarred by the recent war. With an influenza pandemic terrorising Europe, their time in Oxford promises to be eventful. Victory '45: The End of the War in Six Surrenders James Holland and Al Murray Bantam, £22 To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, James Holland and Al Murray have joined forces to illuminate how peace was finally achieved. Between May and September 1945 there were six surrenders: four in Europe, two in Japan. Describing the events leading to each, and telling the stories of the people involved, from generals and political leaders to service men and women and civilians, Victory '45 memorably brings history, and those who made it, to life.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Whiting Foundation announces grants of $50,000 each for 10 emerging writers
NEW YORK (AP) — Ten emerging writers, from an author of speculative fiction to a poet rooted in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, have received $50,000 grants from the Whiting Foundation. Since 1985, the foundation has had a mission to nurture 'new creations' by supporting poets, playwrights and authors of fiction and nonfiction. Past winners have included Tony Kushner, André Aciman and Tracy K. Smith. This week, the foundation announced its class of 2025. Elwin Cofman writes speculative fiction that Whiting judges say offers 'illuminating sites of bawdy humor and horror,' while Karisma Price crafts post-Katrina poems that are 'songs, howls, portraits, critiques.' Judges praised the essays of Aisha Sabatini Sloan for their 'startling connections between the personal and the collective.' The other winners were dramatist Liza Birkenmeier, fiction writers Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, Shubha Sunder and Claire Luchette, graphic fiction writer Emil Ferris, poet Annie Wenstrup and nonfiction writer Sofi Thanhauser. 'These writers demonstrate astounding range; each has invented the tools they needed to carve out their narratives and worlds,' Courtney Hodell, Whiting's director of literary programs, said in a statement. 'Taken as a whole, their work shows a sharply honed sensitivity to our history, both individual and collective, and a passionate curiosity as to where a deeper understanding of that history can take us.'
Associated Press
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Whiting Foundation announces grants of $50,000 each for 10 emerging writers
NEW YORK (AP) — Ten emerging writers, from an author of speculative fiction to a poet rooted in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, have received $50,000 grants from the Whiting Foundation. Since 1985, the foundation has had a mission to nurture 'new creations' by supporting poets, playwrights and authors of fiction and nonfiction. Past winners have included Tony Kushner, André Aciman and Tracy K. Smith. This week, the foundation announced its class of 2025. Elwin Cofman writes speculative fiction that Whiting judges say offers 'illuminating sites of bawdy humor and horror,' while Karisma Price crafts post-Katrina poems that are 'songs, howls, portraits, critiques.' Judges praised the essays of Aisha Sabatini Sloan for their 'startling connections between the personal and the collective.' The other winners were dramatist Liza Birkenmeier, fiction writers Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, Shubha Sunder and Claire Luchette, graphic fiction writer Emil Ferris, poet Annie Wenstrup and nonfiction writer Sofi Thanhauser. 'These writers demonstrate astounding range; each has invented the tools they needed to carve out their narratives and worlds,' Courtney Hodell, Whiting's director of literary programs, said in a statement. 'Taken as a whole, their work shows a sharply honed sensitivity to our history, both individual and collective, and a passionate curiosity as to where a deeper understanding of that history can take us.'
