FEAST OR FAMINE

And the Mountains Echoed  by Khaled Hosseini (2013) is the author’s third book after his best-sellers  The Kite Runner  (2003) and  A Thousand Splendid Suns  (2007). This novel is partially set in Afghanistan, the author’s birth country, from 1949 to 2010.   In 1952, Abdullah is ten years old and he is the protector and carer of his three-year-old sister Pari since their mother died. The brother and sister are inseparable: ‘It was a mystery. I have never seen such affinity between two beings,’ says one of the nine narrators of their story.    From a rural area, their poverty-stricken father Saboor takes Pari to the capital Kabul to sell her to a childless couple. Abdullah is determined not to be parted from his sister. But they are parted and lead very different lives in very different countries.    Finally, in California, more than 50 years later, they reunite in a poignant last chapter.    This is a story about love – of fami...

Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin (1824-36, this edition 2016) is exactly that—all of Pushkin’s short stories and writings, and all set in Russia. Translators Richard Pevear and Larrisa Volokhonsky provide these new interpretations of Pushkin’s masterpieces.  Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist, achieving fame at an early age. After marrying Natalia Gontcharova in 1831 at the age of 32, he died in a duel with his wife’s alleged lover in February 1837 and the age of 37.  Here are the stories of love, hate, betrayal, obsession, and passion, usually set in the harsh conditions of the times.  My favourite is ‘The Blizzard.’ I was reminded of the story when I was in Nur Sultan (previously Astana) in wintry Kazakhstan in January 2020, right in the throes of a snow blizzard. It is set in 1811, almost 210 years ago. The short story is about seventeen-year-old Marya Gavrilovna, ‘brought up on F...

Marie Antoinette: The Courageous End (2018) is set in 1792, the last year of the life of Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI of France.  Four years after Louis married Marie Antoinette, he become king, living in the  Versailles Palace, near Paris, from  1774-1792. Married at 14 years of age, Marie Antoinette was 18 when she reigned over Versailles in luxurious and extravagant fashion. But the novel begins in August 1792, at age 36, and the advent of the French Revolution. The people of Paris were discordant, protesting in anger. Paris was rising! Holed up in the Tuileries Palace, Marie Antoinette knew that the revolutionaries would attack at dawn. Her husband was weak and apathetic, but she was not. She fought for her life and that of their children. Enduring the onslaught for six hours, could her lover for the past 18 years, the handsome Swedish nobleman Axel de Fersen, save her?  King Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. Marie Antoinett...

A Gentle Kind of Poverty (2015) is set from 1994-1996 in England and Myanmar (Burma) in three parts: (1) Reconnection, (2) A World of Affluence, and (3) A Gentle Kind of Poverty. Narrator Lwin Lwin is 39 years old, living in England for the past 14 years. She returns to her birthplace Yangon, Myanmar, for a holiday to see her relatives and friends. The visit has a great impact on her, and when she returns to England, she begins to reflect on the quality of life in her adopted country and the simply, but poorer, life of her family in Myanmar. Lwin Lwin’s shyness and lack of confidence makes it difficult for her to have a male relationship, although she has friends through her work at the BBC. Forty-year-old Richard enters her life, but people advice her against a cross-cultural relationship.  A year later, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest on-and-off from 1989 to 2010, is re...

Palm Beach Babylon: The Sinful History of America's Super-Rich Paradise (1992, this edition 2015) is about the island in Florida where the rich and famous live and vacation.  The book mentions the island’s founder Henry Flagler – establishing Palm Beach in 1894 for the ‘recuperative powers of Florida’s sunshine’ – as well as its guests, visitors, and residents: Isadora Duncan, Gloria Swanson, Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Kennedys, Larry Flynt, John Lennon, Estee Lauder, Donald Trump, the Dodges, Helmsleys, Pulitzers, Vanderbilts, Mizners, and Madoffs – to name a few.  The book is more than tales of sex, drugs, and parties – or of mansions and El Mirasol. There is history behind the stories. After Henry Flagler’s death in 1913, his wife, Mary Lily, became America’s first ‘independent female millionaire.’ And the scandals start with her death in 1917 – and the autopsy of her body to determine whether her death was a result of foul play.  The stock mark...

The Black Velvet Coat (2015) is set in San Francisco in 2013, and 50 years beforehand in 1963 in Arizona. Struggling 28-year-old artist, Anne McFarland, buys a black velvet 1960s retro coat in a thrift shop. Wearing it, she feels like a millionaire. In the pocket is a key. Anne learns about the past owner and becomes wrapped up in the past. It inspires a series of paintings: the Sylvia series.   In 1963 at the age of twenty-one, heiress Sylvia Van Dam is engaged to Robert Lorenzo Lopez, a charismatic playboy. In her black velvet coat she dazzled. As the wedding day approaches, she learns too much about her husband-to-be. Afraid, she takes the next drastic step to ending their engagement. She plans her escape to the Arizona hinterland. Simplistic but easy-to-read novel of artistic creativity and inspiration, poverty and weath, nature and excess, and two women facing fears, loneliness, and detachment before becoming their true selves. ...

No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa (1995) is set in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1994, just before Nelson Mandela became the nation’s first black president. Sipho is a 12-year-old boy fleeing his sleeping mother and abusive step-father one early morning. With money stolen from his mother’s purse, he leaves the rural slums and heads for the capital city, Johannesburg. Mixing with a group of street children he does odd jobs for money – pushing shopping trolleys and parking cars – until Mr Danny, a white shopkeeper, lets him work at his store six days a week. Mr Danny has a daughter Judy and an 11-year-old son David. David has been ‘difficult’ since his mother left. David doesn’t like Sipho, but as Judy says, ‘At the moment, he doesn’t like anyone.’ Sipho returns to the streets and looks for his friends, until he seeks refuge at a homeless shelter and the shelter’s school. It is not like his previous school. This is brief, quick read in a simple style about ...