Bad Island by Stanley Donwood You may have heard of Donwood through his longterm collaborations with Radiohead, or have seen his gloriously colourful cover for Robert MacFarlane’s Underland (right) which came out last year, (indeed Donwood has collaborated with MacFarlane and others on various other illustrated books). I came to Donwood first, however, via a Read More
Tag: War
20 Books of Summer #4 & #5 – Hamid and Miralles
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Hamid’s 2017 Man Booker Prize and Rathbones Folio 2018 shortlisted novel is difficult to categorise. At face value it is a classic boy meets girl, boy loses girl variant, a fable-style romance set in a contemporary Asian city that is not yet at war. On another level, it is about Read More
Art, Love and War
Waiting for Robert Capa by Susanna Fortes, trans from the Spanish by Adriana V Lopez This novel is a fictionalised account of the true story of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, two of the foremost photojournalists who reported on the Spanish Civil War. The story begins in Paris though, when young Jewish German refugee Gerta Read More
Book Group Report: Half of a Yellow Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Our book group read this month was one of those archetypal earnest stories featuring real events that can generate great discussions. This novel takes place in 1960s Nigeria before and during the Nigerian-Biafran war which started in 1967. It follows the lives of two sisters, their Read More
A renowned children’s author goes mainstream…
The True Tale of the Monster Billy Deanby David Almond David Almond’s first novel, written for older children, was Skellig (1998). It parallels the stories of two children who find and help an ailing creature who may or may not be an angel, with that of the boy’s little brother who is ill in hospital. Read More
