Yaddo, Yaddo
Even to me, it seems unlikely. A 50-year-old woman – with no writing history, no MFA, no closet of stories, no folder of poems – pens a novel that becomes a lead title for Simon & Schuster. I’ve been over it a few times in my head – the parts that were amazing, the parts...
Beyond normal
Alice Hoffman’s latest novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things is a magical tale about the power of love and reconciliation focusing on intertwining lives in New York in the early years of the twentieth century. The title refers to a boardwalk freak show on Coney Island offering ‘amazement and entertainment’ to the masses – qualities...
Scents, sights and sounds of South Asia
My first journey outside Europe and America took me to South Asia. I was 19 when I arrived in Karachi. It was three in the morning and I didn’t know a soul in the city. Outside the terminal, a crowd of rapacious taxi-wallahs swooped, grabbing at my bag, trying to pull me in different directions...
