Prospective readers may not choose to read a novel reviewed as harrowing, sometimes depressing, difficult to read (without a box of tissues to wipe away tears), with a protagonist who is at times drawn unsympathetically. However, for readers who are willing to cast this aside, Come Sunday is a rewarding and beautifully written book.
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If there's one time and place I wish I could travel to, it's Moorish Spain; al-Andalus has long had a strange fascination for me, with its extraordinarily developed culture—architecture which continues to amaze us today, some of the greatest thinkers of the time, flourishing literature and music—set against the stunning backdrop of the Spanish landscape.
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This debut collection of short stories from Petina Gappah was the winner of the 2009 Guardian First Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, two of the more prestigious literary prizes. Gappah was born in Zimbabwe….
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Symphony in White is a tale of two sisters. Clarice and Maria Inês, daughters of Afonso and Octacilia Olimpio, came of age in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s during the period of military dictatorship. Lisboa does not directly comment upon the political situation in Brazil during that time, but the political repression is mirrored in the stifling atmosphere of the Olimpio family and the secrets they keep.
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I was a child during the American war in Vietnam. I can still conjure images of the time: horrifying photos in Life magazine, correspondents on the nightly news reporting over the sound of mortar fire, while in the background medics bearing stretchers ran, crouching, toward waiting helicopters.
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