Such a Long Journey — A Novel About Parsi India, 1972
I don’t know why I picked up Rohinton Mistry’s Such A Long Journey. Published and shortlisted for the Booker Prize …
Category Archives: Fiction
Leaping Linguals! Everything is Understood!
Just about my favorite place to be in the world –or in time– is at the annual conference of the …
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, a Novel
Looking at a bookshelf while stopping through Winslow, Arizona I didn’t see a girl in a flat bed Ford but …
“The Bear in the Back” from Tales of the Ixat
THE BEAR IN THE BACK I usually look back when they get in the cab. Just a quick glance is …
Perla — A Novel of the Disappeared and Found
Perla Carolina De Robertis 2012, Random House What a brave book! Carolina De Robertis, widely celebrated for her first novel, The …
The Sheltering Sky — in Morocco
Since my wife returned from a two week visit to Morocco we’ve been combing old movies for scenes shot in …
Tenth of December: George Saunders Short Fiction
Count me among the many who have extravagantly praised George Saunders’ writing. Some of the passages in Tenth of December …
The Prince of Peace — A Novel of Love and War Resistance
On a long train ride from Los Angeles to Oakland recently I was able to take up the recommendation of …
No Man’s Land: A Novel from Vietnam by Duong Thu Huong
I couldn’t have been more surprised when our guide in Hanoi, a Vietnamese Catholic, mentioned offhandedly that some soldiers coming …
Behind the Red Mist — Fiction from Vietnam
I first encountered Ho Anh Thai’s fiction at it’s fantastical best in the wonderful Whereabouts volume of Vietnam: A Traveller’s …
Reading Vietnam
Packed with my travel duffle for a 5 week trip to South East Asia is one of the indispensable series of books …
The Good Soldier Švejk — Anarchic Humor Against War
Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, ‘a certified idiot,’ tickles us into an anti-war, anti-militarism, anti-bureaucracy mood the more we read. Unlike …