Belletrista

This is an archived issue of Belletrista. If you are looking for the current issue, you can find it here


TRIO! Ceri Evans discusses three books by Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif.	"Seven Little Rooms" - original fiction by notable Hindi author Mridula Garg.	Who Has the Power? Reading Arab Women in English by M. Lynx Qualey

Welcome, readers, to our sixth issue! Besides our regular review section featuring an array of intriguing books, and the tantalizing previews of new books in our New & Notable section, we have provided you with a compelling mix of fascinating articles this issue. There is a thought-provoking piece on reading the work of Arab Women in translation, one of our "Trios" explores three books by Ahdaf Soueif, and we report back from the splashy Book Expo America. In this issue we are honored to introduce to our readers the eminent Indian author Mridula Garg with two pieces: the first is an original short story translated from the Hindi by the author herself, and a second piece by Sunita Jain on Ms. Garg's place in literature.

We hope you enjoy this wonderful issue and with it we complete our first year of celebrating literature written by women all over the world! Thank you for being a part of our reading community.

Reviews
Click on 'Reviews' to see the full list of this issue's reviews...

WHO FEARS DEATH

Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okarafor's fanciful and furious novel Who Fears Death is a truly strange hybrid, combining "ripped from the headlines" details of genocide, rape, and female genital mutilation with lyrical descriptions of African deserts and fantastical elements like dueling sorcerers and shape-shifting. It shouldn't work—but it does, and I was drawn in…
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Reviewed by F. P. Crawford

ANITYA: HALFWAY TO NOWHERE

Mridula Garg

Translated from the Hindi by Seema Segal

If you have ever had the the niggling feeling that there is something swimming under your feet in a lake, only to look underwater to see an enormous fish keeping its eye on you, you'll understand the feeling I kept having while reading Anitya, Halfway to Nowhere. I couldn't shake the sense that. . .
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Reviewed by Tui Menzies

THURSDAY NIGHT WIDOWS

Claudia Piñeiro

Translated from the Portuguese by Miranda France

Claudia Piñeiro's Thursday Night Widows presents itself as a thriller. Yet even though in the opening we have three dead bodies in a pool and are promised an investigation of how they came to be there, this novel has more in common with Camus, or with DeLillo, than with a standard thriller. The bodies remain decaying…
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Reviewed by Andrew Stancek

THE HEART SPECIALIST

Claire Holden Rothman

I raced through this novel at one sitting (it's a missing-your-bus-stop kind of a read) and then went back to re-read more slowly. Claire Holden Rothman, inspired by the life of Dr Maud Abbott (1869-1940), one of Montreal's first female doctors, loosely based this engrossing story on Abbott's experiences.
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Reviewed by Chris Mills