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Rabindranath Tagore (02/16)
Set in 1980s London, Odysseus Abroad features a young Bengali protagonist Ananda Sen, who is in the city to study poetry — 'his sights were set on the Olympian, the Parnassian: especially getting published in Poetry Review.' The elephant in the room is the greatest of all Bengali poets, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Even if the ...
Estonia During World War II (02/16)
When the Doves Disappeared is set in Estonia during WWII and the 1960s. The characters are very much shaped by the war and react to it in different ways.
In 1939, as World War II created major players on the world stage, the USSR and Germany shook hands on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that corralled a number of Eastern European ...
Jedediah Strong Smith (02/16)
Author Shannon Burke bases many of his characters and events in Into the Savage Country on the lives and adventures of real-life American frontiersmen and trappers, the most famous of whom is Jedediah Strong Smith.
Smith was born on January 6, 1798 in Jericho, New York (now known as Bainbridge). The fourth of 12 children, he grew ...
Shenzhen, a Special Economic Zone (02/16)
One of the key elements of Whispering Shadows features Westerners conducting business in China, in particular in Hong Kong and the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen about 20 miles north of Hong Kong.
Before being anointed as the first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by then premier Deng Xiaoping in 1980, Shenzhen was an idyllic fishing...
Search and Rescue Dogs (02/16)
If you've ever had a dog, you know that they are constantly using their noses to find things—crumbs on the floor, a buried bone, a chew toy kicked under the sofa, a piece of pizza under a bush in the park. Search And Rescue dogs are trained to use this natural ability to locate missing people and then to notify their handler when ...
The Lighthouse of Alexandria (02/16)
In Light, author Bruce Watson references the Lighthouse of Alexandria as one of the first instances where light was used in a large-scale manner for a practical purpose.
Alexander the Great built the city of Alexandria, Egypt, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in 331 BCE, and as part of the subsequent construction had a stone ...
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Etc. But First, They Have to Stand in Line (02/16)
Before Ellis Island became the 'Welcome to America' sign for about 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954, Castle Garden on the waterfront at the tip of Manhattan was the first official immigration hub. From 1855 to 1890 it took in over 8 million immigrants mostly from Northern Europe.
However, worsening conditions in Europe ensured a...
New Orleans' Levees (02/16)
Though Hurricane Katrina did strike a mighty blow, it was only part of the catastrophe that befell New Orleans. As Sheri Fink writes in Five Days at Memorial, 'Katrina rapidly lost strength after moving onto land. The rain lessened and the winds began to ease by late morning. The water level outside Memorial stabilized at about three feet...
Farmers' Cooperatives (02/16)
As Michael Meyer's book,
In Manchuria, explains, in the village of Wasteland, 'Eastern Fortune is offering apartments in exchange for farmers' homes, which will be razed and the land converted to paddies.' It remains unclear exactly how much — if any — control the farmers will have over their plots of land. Will they ...
Beyond the Book: Orality, Politics, and the Evolution of Nigerian Literature (02/16)
E. C. Osondu's debut novel, This House Is Not For Sale, is rooted in Nigerian oral tradition. Orality, the transmission of thought and idea through speech, was the primary method of communication before the advent of the written word. In West Africa, this function falls to the griot, a singer, storyteller, and musician who serves as ...
The Voynich Manuscript (02/16)
In reviewing Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story, by Michael Rosen, I wrote that most readers would learn something, however small, from such a wide-ranging look at the English language. In my case, I was introduced to the Voynich Manuscript, written in central Europe in the fifteenth century, in a language that no expert has ...
Lupus: A Disease of Body and Mind (02/16)
The autoimmune disease known as Lupus erythematosus, or Lupus, which forms a major thread of the plot in Doctor Death, affects approximately 1.5 million people in the United States, and some five million people worldwide (estimated). Ninety percent are women who experience onset sometime between the ages of 15 and 44, and about twenty ...
Propaganda and its Uses (02/16)
A Kim-Jong Il Production is set in the North Korea of the 1970s when Kim Jong-Il was head of the Ministry of Propaganda. North Korea's motives might have been sinister, but propaganda — defined as information especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view &#...
Tolstoy's Death (02/16)
In the story 'The Jester of Astapovo,' from
The American Lover, a simple stationmaster's life is turned upside down when the world-famous author Count Leo Tolstoy, arrives, near death. The elderly and ailing Tolstoy really did die at the remote train station after fleeing his wife weeks earlier. His
obituary in
The New York Times began: ...
The First Person Plural - Why We Use It (02/16)
As noted in my
review, one unique aspect of Judith Claire Mitchell's
A Reunion of Ghosts is her use of the first person plural literary voice. According to most sources, this point of view dates back to ancient Greece and its famous Greek choruses, which spoke in unison as a group. With such a rich history, you might think more authors ...
Kilim (02/16)
In Orhan's Inheritance, Orhan and his family are makers of kilim rugs, a type of carpet manufactured in Turkey using a technique referred to as 'flatweave' (i.e., a rug that is woven rather than knotted). Dating back to at least 4th century China, this type of rug is common throughout Central Asia, and is known as a palas (Ukraine);...
Colorism (02/16)
In the opening paragraph of God Help the Child, Toni Morrison gives voice to Sweetness, a woman describing herself as 'light-skinned with good hair, what we call high yellow,' who gives birth to a child with very dark skin. She says, 'It didn't take no more than an hour after they pulled her out from between my legs to realize something ...
Novels That Feature Close-Knit Friends (02/16)
One of the many astute portrayals in A Little Life is the closely knit group of friends to which Jude St. Francis, the haunted protagonist, belongs. While the literal coming-of-age happens during the teen years, it could be argued that college, for those who attend, is the real deal. It is a transformative experience for most people, and ...
The Shakespeare Authorship Question (01/16)
Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance playwright and poet – and protagonist of Phillip DePoy's A Prisoner in Malta – produced a handful of dramatic masterpieces in his relatively short life. That is, if you believe he died at age 29 in a bar fight at a public house in Deptford, in southeast London. But some believe his death was ...
The Soviet Union's Uranium Gulags (01/16)
In Oblivion, the unnamed narrator travels to the abandoned uranimum mines on the outer edges of the Siberian taiga to discover the truth about Grandfather II, a family friend who played an important role in his upbringing.
In the race for the atomic bomb in the lead up to World War II, the Allies had effectively secured most of the ...
The Skylark (01/16)
Images of birds abound in Kate Atkinson's new novel, A God in Ruins - surprising, perhaps, even the author herself: 'Just don't ask me why there are so many geese. I have absolutely no idea,' she writes in her afterword. Most indelible, though, is the image of the skylark, which Atkinson includes near the book's opening, as a young Teddy ...
The Sri Lankan Civil War (01/16)
The country of Sri Lanka covers an area of just over 25,000 square miles. Located off the southern tip of India, the island has been called 'the pearl of the Indian Ocean' due to to its shape, location, and natural beauty. Separated from India by about 18 miles at its closest point it is believed that there was a land bridge between it ...
Aquariums (01/16)
A couple of thousand years B.C., the Chinese were building fish pens in lakes (for food and possibly entertainment), and evidence of Roman fish tanks in the sea still exist (such as the
fish tank that can still be seen a little north of Rome). But building containers to showcase the fish away from their natural surroundings had many ...
Animal Ark in Reno, Nevada (01/16)
In the acknowledgments section at the end of
The Animals, Christian Kiefer reveals that the inspiration for Bill Reed's North Idaho Wildlife Rescue came partially from
Animal Ark in Reno, Nevada. Opened in 1981, Animal Ark provides a haven for injured and abandoned animals that, for whatever reason, cannot be released back into the wild. ...
The Day of The Dead (01/16)
Leigh was born on November 1. The day following Halloween is known as All Saints Day. In Mexico, where Dario, her friend the gravedigger is from, it is also known as Dias de Los Muertos — The Day of the Dead. On Leah's fifteenth birthday, and the first day they meet, Dario gives her a tiny clay skeleton, La Catrina, the patron saint...
The Tenement Museum (01/16)
Like many immigrant families in New York at the turn of the 20th century, Clara and her family lived in a tenement very much like the one preserved and recreated at the Tenement Museum in Manhattan's Lower East Side, a National Historic Site run by the National Park Service. This five-story brick building on Orchard Street was built in ...
Made in Greece (01/16)
In choosing to set Outline in Athens, Rachel Cusk is the latest in a long line of authors, poets and playwrights who have gravitated toward or drawn inspiration from Greece - its geography, its history and its vast canon of ancient writings.
The tradition of Grecian influence on literature began over two thousand years ago when the ...
Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Conflict (01/16)
On June 25 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, which, since World War II, had operated as a federal republic comprised of the territories – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.
The departure of Croatia, a republic with a large Serbian population, was of ...
The Hawala System (01/16)
In A Man Of Good Hope, many monetary transactions are carried out by the informal system known as hawala. At its most basic, hawala is a method of money transfer that is used to send remittances without using standard channels such as banks. While the system made headlines shortly after 9-11, where it was alleged that hawala was used to ...
Keys of All Kinds (01/16)
On a wall in his home in A Pleasure and a Calling, William Heming hangs the keys to all the houses he's sold, copies made from the originals that their residents still use. He can go in those houses, no matter if the owners are home or not. It makes for disquieting reading, but also inspires curiosity about what types of keys exist.
...
Coal Mining: Basic Overview (01/16)
According to the World Coal Association, the
global annual haul for hard coal is over 6000 million tons, with the top five producers being China, the United States, India, Australia and South Africa.
Coal mining is usually broken up into two categories: Surface (also known as opencast) and underground. The latter currently accounts for...
Crafting a Violin (01/16)
In Black River, Wes's father made a handmade fiddle for his son. This treasured belonging supports many of the story's themes. The fiddle itself is a multi-sensory object. Beyond its key function of making music, it is also visually beautiful, and provides a tactile and kinesthetic release for Wes.
A fiddle and a violin are pretty much...
Migrant Smuggling (01/16)
The Jaguar's Children is based on a real-life example of migrant smuggling gone awry. Unfortunately such incidents are becoming increasingly common around the world.
It's important to note that there are differences between migrant smuggling and human trafficking even if there might be overlap between the two kinds of ...
The Naked Mole Rat (01/16)
In Ten Million Aliens, Simon Barnes describes many unusual creatures, one of which is the naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber).
The naked mole rat, also known as the sand puppy or desert mole rat, is a rodent, although it's more closely related to porcupines, chinchillas and guinea pigs than to either moles or rats. These animals are...
The Bloomsbury Group (01/16)
While Vanessa And Her Sister focuses on artist Vanessa Bell and her writer sister, Virginia Woolf, it also places them in the larger context of the famous Bloomsbury Group, which was a set of intellectuals who debated radical ideas about society, ethics and a host of other issues. Founding members included Virginia Woolf and her siblings ...
Aviation in 1937 (12/15)
Flora Saudade, one of the primary protagonists in Martha Brockenbough's
The Game of Love and Death is an aviatrix. The novel takes place in 1937, a year that was full of aviation inventions and adventures. Here are a few highlights:
- January 19 – Howard Hughes (pilot, businessman and investor) set a new world record, flying from...
Victims of Poaching (12/15)
Travel literature has contributed immeasurably to many people's understanding of foreign lands and cultures they might not otherwise visit – or even become aware of. One of the many contributions of travel writers – such as William deBuys, author of The Last Unicorn – has been to raise awareness of the global epidemic of...
Tim Johnston - A Carpenter Who Builds Houses and Stories (12/15)
In 2007, Tim Johnston's father asked him if he would go to his new house in the Rockies and do the finish work. Johnston made his living as a carpenter at the time, and since 2006 his father had been asking him to do the job. Johnston wasn't writing at the time; he was contemplating, instead, that he might never write again, and so he ...
Make Room for Ducklings? (12/15)
We did not write a featured review or beyond the book article of
The Nature of The Beast so here is an earlier 'Beyond the Book' written for
How The Light Gets In. We also have an informative article about why Quebec speaks French written for
Bury Your Dead (#9).
In her
review of
How The Light Gets In for
The Washington Post, Maureen ...
Congo and Dirty Minerals (11/15)
In The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson shows that Africa has been exploited for minerals for a good long time. 'This time we concern ourselves with metals and minerals,' points out the main character, Roland Nair, trying to explain his mission that takes him from Sierra Leone to Congo.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is ...
The Psychology of Debt (11/15)
In Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld, Jake Halpern examines the afterlife of a debt once it has been declared 'bad.' But is there ever such a thing as a 'good' debt?
What would you do if you won a million dollars? Would you buy that grand house you've always dreamed of? Or the big sports car? ...
Car Crashes in Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature (11/15)
In a controversial
article in
The Wall Street Journal in June 2011, 'Darkness Too Visible,' Meghan Cox Gurdon lamented that the world of young adult literature has become too dark – a forest thick with loss, pain, death, and the gruesome details that describe them all. She offered the suggestion that such books might introduce teens...
Interpol and Red Notices (11/15)
The title Red Notice refers to one of the many alerts issued by Interpol, the world's largest international police organization.
The idea of an international police force was originally proposed at the First International Criminal Police Congress in Monaco in 1914, although the organization didn't come into being until an initiative ...
The Cost of Hunting for Treasure (11/15)
In The Marauders, Lindquist, the one-armed treasure hunter, needs only his pirogue (a small boat) and a metal detector to search the swamps of Barataria, Louisiana for the rumored treasure of renowned and revered pirate Jean Lafitte. That's it. And he's had that old metal detector for many years, so his expenses are low. But treasure ...
Medical Tourism (11/15)
Internal Medicine is but one view of the U.S. medical system. According to
The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation looking to foster a better health care system in the USA, the U.S. ranked last in a survey of healthcare in 11 developed nations - behind Canada, ranked at #10, and way behind Germany & Netherlands in a tie at #5, with ...
North Korea's Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (11/15)
Dr. Kim Chin-Kyung (aka Kim Jin Kyong, James Kim) is the founder of both the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) and its older sister institution, the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in China. It is at PUST that Suki Kim worked on assignment as an English teacher.
Born in 1935 in Seoul, Kim was a ...
A History of Fresco that Leads to Francesco del Cossa (11/15)
Early Fresco Painting
Ali Smith's How to Be Both was inspired by a book she found about frescoes. Fresco, meaning 'fresh' in Italian, is the technique of painting in water-based pigment on wet plaster so that the plaster, paint and wall fuse into a single entity. The earliest known examples date from c. 1500 BCE, on the island of Crete, ...
Charles Rennie Mackintosh ("Mr. Mac") (11/15)
Mackintosh (1868–1928), one of the central characters in Esther Freud's Mr. Mac and Me, was one of 11 children born to a police superintendent and his wife in Glasgow, Scotland. Early on he showed promise as an architect, winning the 1890 Alexander Thomson Traveling Studentship, which funded his travel around Europe to study classic...
Child Abandonment Syndrome (11/15)
Throughout the novel,
Lila, the protagonist suffers a deep ongoing shame resulting from early childhood abuse and neglect. Although it is never articulated in the story, there is a name for this response: Child Abandonment Syndrome.
In a 2010
article published in a blog, 'The Many Faces of Addiction,' for
Psychology Today, Claudia ...
Troubles in Southern Memoirs (11/15)
Barry Moser's We Were Brothers presents his troubled relationship with the South. He shares his positive memories of his childhood filled with games and conversation, but what he seems to remember the most, now in his later adulthood, are the times of strife – those moments of conflict and bigotry.
Anyone familiar with ...
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