Alternative Palestines
PALESTINIANS HAVE THIS JOKE (it’s not very funny): A Gazan is running frantically down the street. Someone grabs him and asks: ‘What’s going on? Has something happened?’ ‘No,’ the man replies, ‘but it might.’ Through 77 years of occupation, violence, displacement, and repeated collective punishment, Palestinians have never stopped running. Not just from the soldiers...
Memoir, social history and more
MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES involving famous relatives are an intriguing read as they offer a backstage pass to history, combining private lives with public myth. After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal by Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde’s only grandson, comes to mind. As does Two Flamboyant Fathers by Nicolette Devas. The daughter of Irish poet Francis...
Patrick Ryan: Connecting lives
PATRICK RYAN’S CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED short story collection The Dream Life of Astronauts (2017) marked him out as a writer to watch. His stories brim with rounded often-unforgettable characters living quietly, with yearning, humanity and acceptance. He is a master of dialogue, the unsentimental and the subtle. So when his debut novel Buckeye arrived, I approached...
Breaking point
ONE DAY THE CHILDREN AND I came home to see Hamad sitting in front of the TV. ‘Why’re you home early?’ Haris asked. ‘To spend time with you,’ Hamad said, patting his lap so Haris could go and sit with him. He only had to look at me in silence and I understood what had...
The nail in the wall
IT WAS SUNDAY. MÓNICA WANTED to hang a picture on the wall, a small Walter Lazzaro reproduction, and I didn’t want to. The wall wasn’t actually a wall, but one of the four square columns that delineate the perimeter of the room. It’s a narrow column, but wide enough to hang a small picture on...
(eventually) Embracing the sisterhood
I SENT MY FIRST MANUSCRIPT OUT in December 2003, when I was 14. It was a 100,000-word fantasy novel about dragons, and I explained to the lady behind the Post Office counter how I was going to be a published author. She was like, “Ooh, I’ll watch this space.” No agent, at all, wanted to...
Daria Lavelle: Savouring the beyond
A DELICIOUSLY ORIGINAL supernatural thriller that reads like it could be a script for a mesmerising Punchdrunk production, Daria Lavelle’s Aftertaste blends food and ghosts with romance and menace. It’s lively, it’s colourful, it’s funny. It’s a feast of a story, boasting engaging characters and a riveting plot. The novel’s beating heart is Kostya, who...
Brontë country
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my parents would walk me out into the wilds of England’s moorlands in a bright-coloured anorak, wellies that squelched. I didn’t like walking then; I was a sickly child with constant migraines, preferring to read books curled on the sofa. And so, dragged across the barrens with a blinding stick...
My mother’s war
DRIVING HER 2CV BACK TO PARIS through the gloomy forests of the Oise, Lucie imagined the dialogue at her trial:“Have you ever been a Nazi?”“Of course! I was a very happy Nazi.”“You really were a Nazi?”“Why not?”“Do you know, you are the very first person we have ever heard confess to it.”Lucie imagined the entire...
Welcome to the Green Zone
IT’S NOT LIKE I WAS EXPECTING STALINGRAD, but Baghdad took the piss. Arriving for the first time, tucked into a UN car, I watched as the city lights refracted through the bulletproof glass. Floodlights hovered over a pickup football game, square lamps uplit the National Museum, fairy lights dripped down palm trees beside the Tigris...
Brouhaha in Baghdad
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO Nussaibah Younis, whose debut social and political satire has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, having already gathered a truckload of rapturous reviews including The Irish Times, Guardian and The Times, which describes Fundamentally as Bridget Jones in Iraq. This novel, a tale of a heartbroken English academic who...
A visit in my room
I HEARD A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, and quickly put my notebook under the mattress. I thought that lunch was over and that one of the orderlies had come to call me to the second part of the therapeutic conversations. But no: when I opened the door, Martin Amis was standing there. “May I come...
