Nelson Mandela’s Favourite African Folktales is a collection of recordings of some of the world’s biggest celebrities reading out traditional South African folk tales as chosen by Nelson Mandela. The tales are perfectly charming by themselves, but there is added novelty in hearing Matt Damon sing out an African spell and Whoopi Goldberg take on [...]
The Glass Room is the tale of a wealthy couple living in Eastern Europe just before the outbreak of the second world war. Depicting the Halcyon years with glittering images of travel, modern architecture and a seething sexual undercurrent, Simon Mawer transports the reader into the mindset of rich, cultured, multi-lingual Europeans looking to a [...]
“My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness” follows the life of Taha Muhammad Ali and the now destroyed village where he grew up. Taha is a poet from Palestine and remembers a time before the second world war, when the area was under a British Mandate. Adina Hoffman undertook the task of painstakingly reconstructing, not [...]
The Taleban administration in Afghanistan negotiated with the American embassy in Islamabad in 2001 to hand over Osama bin Laden to a specially appointed court, but suggestions of using a neutral third country to try the suspected terrorist were rejected by the USA, according to a new book by the former Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan. [...]
Herta Müller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature after the announcement was made at 1pm CET this afternoon. Herta Müller is best known for her poetry, novels and essays depicting the difficulties of life in Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was president of the nation for 15 years, until 1989. Romania-born Muller was [...]
At the launch of Guinness World Records 2010, the new World’s Tallest Man, Sultan Kosen, a 27 year-old from turkey, was unveiled by the world record’s company in London. At 8’1″, or 2.47m, Kosen is the tallest living man known to the company. The honour of becomming the world’s tallest is not without it’s problems, [...]
Charismatic British author and television chef, Keith Floyd, has died today at the age of 65 following a heart attack. Floyd, well known for both his eccentricity and his unique dress sense – often sporting a cravat, and never without a glass of red wine – had been diagnosed with bowel cancer in July this [...]
The first chapers of this book bear an eery resemblance to the case of Josie Russell, who survived an attack in which her sister and mother died. The details are different, however, and the book takes an intriguing journey into the post-trauma life of a survivor. Several stories are layered together with masterful precision. The [...]
Recent Comments