Laura McVeigh: Journeys of the mind
Laura McVeigh’s debut novel Under the Almond Tree is a vibrant and tender modern fable of a young life blighted by war. Fifteen–year-old Samar is displaced from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and narrates her story from aboard the Trans-Siberian Express as it trundles east and west between Moscow and Vladivostok. With family and memories in tow, as...
Best of Enemies Vol 2: 1953–1984
The second volume of Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B.’s graphic novel history of US-Middle East relations begins in the 1950s with the Eisenhower Doctrine and ends with the fallout from the suicide bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. This turbulent era of US-led intervention also saw the Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War, the Iranian...
Fatima Bhutto borders on empathy
Fatima Bhutto’s mesmerising and impassioned debut novel The Shadow of the Crescent Moon focuses on the impossible but urgent choices facing five young people living in the tribal areas on the Pakistan border with Afghanistan, where communities are under constant threat from brutal Taliban foot soldiers and American drone strikes – and the vagaries of...
