Category Archives: Travel Guides
Once You Break A Knuckle
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2012 In the remote Kootenay Valley in western Canada, good people sometimes do bad things. Two adolescents sabotage a rope swing; a heartbroken young man chooses not to warn his best friend about an approaching car; sons challenge their fathers. Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue,
The Anatomy of a Moment
In February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco`s dictatorship and during the first democratic vote in parliament for a new prime minister – Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing soldiers burst into the Spanish parliament and began firing shots. Only three members of Congress defied the incursion and did not dive for
Truth Like The Sun
It is 1962, and the city of Seattle is about to be famous. Roger Morgan, an audacious young promoter, wants to pull off the ultimate coup de theatre: the World`s Fair. Roger dazzles everyone he meets, and is still a backstage power forty years later when, at the age of seventy, he makes a bid
Pedalare! Pedalare!
The relationship between sport, history, politics and wider culture is always a fascinating one. In Pedalare! Pedalare! John Foot explores the centrality of cycling in the Italian consciousness with reference to Fascism, the Cold War and the two World Wars. The sport’s development is investigated alongside changes in wider Italian society, from the poor peasants
The Prisoner of Paradise
Lucy Gladwell arrives in Mauritius from England to live with her aunt and uncle at their grand plantation house. Under the surface of this beautiful island paradise, poised between India and Africa, there is unease, and Lucy cannot help but feel discomfited by the restrictions she sees around her, and by the strangely attractive Don
The House in France
Gully Wells is the daughter of the glamorous, funny, prickly American journalist Dee Wells and the brilliant logical positivist and Oxonian philosopher A.J. Ayer. In The House in France, she recounts events around her return in 2009 to La Migoua, the house in Provence which had belonged to her mother, perched on a hill above
Waiting for Sunrise
Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city`s preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will
Street Fight in Naples – A City`s Unseen History
Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. It is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. In 1503, Naples was the Mediterranean capital of Spain`s world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only
Painter Of Silence
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012 Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page. The
Cypress Tree
Kamin Mohammadi was nine years old when her family fled Iran during the 1979 Revolution. Bewildered by the seismic changes in her homeland, she turned her back on the past and spent her teenage years trying to fit in with British attitudes to family, food and freedom. She was twenty-seven before she returned to Iran,
Indigo – In Search of the Colour that Seduced the World
Indigo is the rich, electrifying history of a precious dye: its relationship to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, its profound influence on fashion, and its spiritual significance – all very much alive today. But it is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley`s ancestors include a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan, several
The Yellow Duster Sisters
1939. Nine year old Susie and her sister Gyll live in Watford, and all week look forward to their Saturday shopping expedition to Woolworths with their nanny, to buy something nice for Mummy. But as war breaks out in Europe, the girls are evacuated to Africa. Feeling abandoned and alone, the sisters find their new
A More Perfect Heaven
In the 1520s a Polish cleric named Nicolaus Copernicus developed a revolutionary theory which placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of our universe. The secret existence of this manuscript tantalised scientists everywhere in Europe. Then in 1539 a young German mathematician, Rheticus, travelled to meet Copernicus in the hope of setting eyes
Leningrad – Tragedy of a City Under Seige 1941-44
When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, he intended to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. Soviet resistance forced him to change tactics: with his forward troops only thirty kilometres from the city`s historic centre, he decided instead to starve it out. Using newly available diaries and government records, Anna Reid describes a
The Coward`s Tale
`My name is Laddy Merridew. I`m a cry-baby. I`m sorry.` `And my name is Ianto Jenkins. I am a coward. And that`s worse.` The boy Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother, stumbles off the bus into a small Welsh mining community, where he begins an unlikely friendship with Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town
The Proud Highway: Fear and Loathing Letters vol 1
Before there was Gonzo, there was just plain Hunter — a precocious, earnest, and occasionally troublesome honor student in Louisville, Kentucky. Before there was Doctor Thompson, there was Airman Thompson — the military`s answer to Grantland Rice, protecting America by covering sports for his Florida base`s newspaper. Before there was Fear and Loathing, there was
Debatable Land
Set on a sailing boat as it travels from Tahiti to New Zealand, Debatable Land is a story of memory, childhood and longing. On board Ardent Spirit are the painter Alec Dundas, escaping a destructive, failed relationship; Logan Urquhart, the restless skipper; his troubled second wife Elspeth, who fears Logan is slipping away from her;
In the Land of Oz
On what he calls `the adventure of his life`, Howard Jacobson travels around Australia, never entirely sure where he is heading next or whether he has the courage to tackle the wild life of the bush, the wild men of the outback, or the even wilder women of the seaboard cities. In pursuit of the
The Food Of Morocco
Paula Wolfert`s name is synonymous with revealing the richres of authentic Mediterranean cooking, especially the cuisine of Morocco. In The Food of Morocco, she brings to bear more than forty years of experience of, love of, and original research on the traditional food of that country. The result is the definitive book on Moroccan cuisine,
A Twitter Tear
Where can you find first-hand accounts of the Arab Spring, Japan`s nuclear disaster or the Norwegian atrocities? Thousands flouting celebrity superinjunctions? X-rated snaps of politicians? A babysitter mistaken for a cricket match? Or Darth Vader`s advice to angry US voters? The answer, of course: on Twitter. The first of its kind, A Twitter Year distills
