Harriet Constable: The Instrumentalist
In 1696 a baby was posted through the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Venice. She was named Anna Maria della Pietà and become one of the greatest violinists of the eighteenth century. Her teacher was Antonio Vivaldi… YET THIS EXTRAORDINARY MUSICIAN remains largely unknown today. Numerous historical records exist – she...
Pulling it all together
Writing has always been my thing. Back when I was a crime reporter in the US, picking my way across murder scenes and figuring out how to get blood out of my shoes, I was there because I wanted to write. And when I worked in communications for the British government, trying to persuade spies...
Thoughts from/on the frontier
A ‘frontier’ is a place where one society meets another. A place of risk and encounter, where one wilderness sees itself change into something ever wilder. The historic American West might be the archetype of this idea of a frontier; the most famous of belts between the known and unknown where opportunity, change, exploration and...
Filtering the keepers
What is The Centre? In this clever and fun novel by debut novelist Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, the protagonist Anisa is bored in her career as a translator. But all that changes when she meets new boyfriend Adam, who introduces her to a place that can change her life and bring the success that she craves....
The Komagata Maru incident
The colorful history of the Western passport does not account entirely for passportism against Third World countries. For the crucial piece of subtext missing in this history, we have to read between the lines. In the nineteenth century, the British had made it a common practice to move around indentured labor between their colonies. However,...
Jessica Anthony: Orbiting the brink
Set over the course of a sunny November day in suburban Delaware in the late 1950s, Jessica Anthony’s The Most dissects the hopes, uncertainties and secret desires of a married couple whose life hasn’t quite panned out as they’d hoped. Handsome people-pleaser Virgil Beckett drifted into a job as an insurance agent, but is ill-equipped...
Without a trace
Ariel dragged himself out of bed and went to the kitchen. He wanted to sleep some more, but couldn’t. Books and newspapers were scattered everywhere in the living room. He had to tidy up. It took seven steps to get to the little kitchen. He opened the big silver refrigerator and stood there perplexed, as...
