Martyrdom Street is the first foray into fiction for Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet. Born and raised in Iran, she has been an outspoken advocate of political and cultural change in her home country, and is the author of several works of non-fiction about Iran.
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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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I'll confess that when I read short stories, I often feel as if I'm having a snack, when what I want is a full meal. Not so with Toni Jensen's dazzling collection, From the Hilltop. In just a few pages, she manages to fill in the past, present and enough of the future to leave a reader satisfied. After I finished these stories, the only thing I was hungry for was more Toni Jensen. She's that good.
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Unusual, unorthodox, and uncanny is how I might sum up the detective we are introduced to in Fred Vargas's first "Commissaire Adamsberg" mystery. And if you are a seasoned reader of detective fiction, this novel—this detective—may cause you to question the very reasons you read in this genre.
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What a journey this book has taken! In order to fully appreciate this treasure of Korean literature, you will need some background information before you start to read. From Wŏnso Pond first appeared in serialised form in a daily newspaper in Korea. Although published as a novel in 1940, the book did not pick up a wide readership in Korea until 1953. It was another fifty-six years before it would be translated into English.
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