FEAST OR FAMINE

  The Discomfort of Evening (2020) is set on a small village farm in the Netherlands.   The narrator Jas begins at the age of ten, during a wintery Christmas with her parents and siblings: brothers Matthies and Obbe, and younger sister Hanna.    Matthies is an excellent ice skater, but he has an accident and dies. Jas, Obbe, and Hanna cope with their loss in different ways. This is the story of Jas’s life after her brother’s death.    Obbe hangs a note on his bedroom door that says ‘Do not disturb.’ He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Jas sleeps in Matthies bedroom in the attic. Jas stops taking off her coat. Hanna is the only one who understands why she has stopped taking off her coat.   After the holidays, Jas has to go back to school. What is she going to tell people? She fakes cheeriness.    Jas reads a lot, and she likes heroes. She begins to have fantasies. Her fantasies become more and more disturbing. She creates the dark world of The ...

Asterix comic co-creator, Albert Uderzo, who teamed with Rene Goscinny to create Gaul Asterix (the character with the moustache), died in Paris on Tuesday 24 March 2020, aged 92. Dargaud, the former publisher of the Asterix comic books, announced Uderzo’s death from heart failure.  Albert Uderzo was born on 25 April 1927 in Fismes, in eastern France. He was born with 12 fingers, but had an operation to remove two of them. He grew up in Paris with his Italian parents. Albert Uderzo and Rene Goscinny created the Asterix comic series in 1959—60 years ago. Asterix tells of the adventures of an ancient Gaul named Asterix resisting the Romans in 50 BC using a magic potion that gives him superhuman strength. Asterix is described as a weakling who defeats the strong. His friends include Obelix and Dogmatrix.  Uderzo’s partner Rene Goscinny died in 1977, and Uderzo continued the series alone until 2011. Uderzo created Les Editions Albert Rene in 1979, splitt...

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) is set in Lima, Peru, in 1714. At noon, on Friday 20 July 1714, ‘the finest bridge in all of Peru’ collapsed. Five people – pedestrians walking across the bridge – fell to their death. Who were these five hapless individuals?  Red-haired Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, witnessed the harrowing incident. From northern Italy, he was in Peru, near the bridge, by chance. He vowed to learn about the identity of the five people, and to know of their lives, their characters, and their destinies.  The old woman, Dona Maria, Marquesa de Montemayor, originally from Spain, and her travelling companion, the little orphan girl Pepita from Lima, raised by the Abbess Madre Maria del Pilar, are the first two people he learns about. Then there is 22-year-old Esteban, the twin brother of Manuel, both orphan boys also raised by the Abbess of the Convent, Madre Maria del Pilar. Lastly, Brother Juniper reveals the lives of 50-year-old Uncle Pio...

The plane leaving the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, bound for the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, took off at 8:44 am local time on Sunday 10 March, losing contact with air traffic control at Bole International Airport just six minutes later. The plane had crashed, killing passengers from more than 35 different countries.  I am in Paris, working for the United Nations, specifically with UNESCO, and their flag flew at half-mast today in remembrance of 19 UN staff that were killed in the plane crash. According to the UN Department of Safety and Security in Kenya, 19 UN staff died in the crash. The World Food Programme (WFP) lost seven staff, the Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) lost two, as did the International Telecommunications Union. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Sudan,  World Bank and UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) each lost one s...

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

The 2015 figures were released on the hepatitis death rates across the European Union member states. There wer 5.2 million deaths in the European Union in 2015 – and 7,300 of them were caused by viral hepatitis.  Men and women were almost equally affected, with 3,900 male deaths and 3,400 female deaths. This has remained relatively stable since records were kept from 2011. However, about 66% of deaths were people over the age of 65 years. Italy overwhelmingly recorded the most absolute number of deaths caused by viral hepatitis in 2015 (39.7% - 2,900), followed by Germany (13.2% - 960), Spain (12.3% - 900), and France (8.2% - 600).  If factoring the number of deaths per population of each country (per million inhabitants), the results are: Italy (40), Austria (31), Latvia (26), Hungary (21), and Spain (19).  Malta recorded the lowest number of viral hepatitis deaths in 2015 at zero. Low rates were recorded in Slovenia and Finland, both with 1 de...

A recent study in 2017 reveals the longevity traits of nonagenarians and centenarians in Cilento, southern Italy, and that the secret to long life is more than diet. The University of California’s San Diego Centre for Healthy Aging conducted a study of 90 and 100 year olds in Cilento, Italy, a rural region famous for its high concentration of very old residents. For the study, published in International Psychogeriatrics, co-author and Italian psychologist Anna Scelzo interviewed 29 Cilento residents ranging in age from 90 to 101, and asked them about their life histories, losses, values and beliefs. She also talked with 51 of their younger relatives to get their impressions of the elders’ personalities. Anna Scelzo found that the interviewed participants had a lot in common. They were positive, optimistic, hopeful, resilient, stubborn, and hard-working. Despite the traumatic events in their long lives, they were still hopeful for the future and had something to live ...