“ …When a handshake passes the elbow it becomes another thing.” Arrow of God, by critically acclaimed Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, is an allegory about the struggle between tradition and modernism in colonial Nigeria, told through the lens of an Igbo fetish priest,...
I am in Rwanda again. This time around I am staying for a total of 5 weeks. It is the longest time I have spent here thus far. This extended duration has afforded me the unique opportunity to immerse myself more deeply in the local culture and history. As part of this...
The Murmur of Bees was a thoroughly enjoyable read from cover to cover. The beautiful, emotionally charged, lyrical prose of Sofía Segovia had me hooked from the start. This is a heart-warming tale about the vicissitudes of a landed Mexican family, which is set...
I sit to write this post with trepidation in my heart. The angst that I feel welling up within my veins is only eclipsed by the unrepetant anger, in fact outrage, that I feel towards the forces in this world that have historically and contemporarily conspired to deny...
“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of the best books that I have read in ages. The sheer beauty and intensity of Khaled Hosseini’s...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The beginning in which she describes her life growing up in Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother, Momma Henderson, and her crippled uncle, Uncle Willie, was enthralling....
I am learning to let go. To let go of my attachment to ideas, things and people. It’s not easy. Yet I find myself somehow making progress. In the past I would have insisted, hung on or pushed harder in many situations, whereas now I take pause and more often...
Although I have heard for some time about The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I have only recently managed to get around to reading this critically acclaimed novel. In fact, what prompted me to dive into it was another book that I recently read, Norwegian Wood,...
I have discovered through the course of my painstaking research for my upcoming historical fiction novel, Children of the Ocean God, that Caribbean history is littered with countless tragic stories of injustice, suffering and genocide. None moreso than the fascinating...
From start to finish Haruki Murakami had me enthralled by his novel Norwegian Wood. I literally could not put this book down until I finished it. In fact, after a slow start due to business related travel, I completed the remaining three quarters of Norwegian Wood in...
