To date I’ve read every single book that Robert Thorogood has put out into the world. So, I was super excited to hear of his new series launched last month by HQ Publishing which is in a nutshell fabulous!

Thorogood, an English screenwriter & novelist is most known as the creator of the British BBC TV hit series ‘Death in Paradise’ and is the author of the subsequent 4 books based on the series itself.

"The Marlow Murder Club" by Robert Thorogood is perfect for lovers of Agatha Christie and Murder She Wrote (which btw I still watch re-runs of if I happen to come across as I’m channel surfing).

The book takes place in the beautiful serene english town of Marlow where 70 yr-old Judith Potts lives alone in a faded mansion, setting crosswords for the Times newspaper & drinking scotch. Whole out swimming - naked - she witnesses a murder. The local police don’t believe her, so this reclusive woman decides to carry out her own investigation. Soon she’s joined by two other women who couldn’t be more different: extrovert, loud, say-it-as-it-is dog walker Suzie, & the prim & proper, dust-phobic Becks, wife of the local vicar. Together, they are the murder club.

The novel is charming, fun & devilishly sassy. And all I want now is to move to Marlow (even though for such a small quaint town, the bodies do pile up). What I loved about it is that not only are the three women no match for the murderer, they are no match for any person (male or female) who tries to undermine them either for their age, class, gender or looks.

The novel is an absolute riot of a read and you (as I did) will enjoy putting the pieces together to figure out who dunnit (if from the start you pay close enough attention to the clues dotted around). The writing is superb and I’m betting my M&Ms stash it’ll make it to TV — you can say you heard it here first 😉

The official book launch will be held virtually on Thursday, Februay 11, 2021 and it's free and open to the public. You can RSVP HERE

​There were tears for this one my friends. Fat, cascading, hiccup-accompanied ones. This is THAT book where you live & love every word. "The House in the Cerulean Sea" is storytelling at its finest from Lambda award-winning author TJ Klune published by Tor.

The 2020 novel is about love, family, & being exceptional. It’s about living and caring & stepping up even when just going along is the much safer & more comfortable route. It’s about finding yourself no matter your age, finding your passion in the unlikeliest of places & finding a community that accepts you for who you are becoming at once shelter & home. It’s about a magical island with magical children thought to be so dangerous that they’re likely to bring about the end of days (and in a way they do!!)

It’s fun, genuinely scary in parts but extremely heart warming. I get how some readers thought it heavy on the moralising or even the cuteness but I found it worked and the characters won me over totally and completely. One would have to be made of stone not to. Read it. Now!

You can listen to an excerpt of the book HERE.

​Am loving how this entire book uses a concise question and answer format to inform of the afflictions that have long tormented the Modern Middle East thus revealing the fundamental struggles that the region has endured since 2010.

In "The New Middle East: what everyone needs to know", James L. Gelvin presents ‘an overview of the contemporary Middle East, touching on topics including ‘the perverse results’ of the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, the rise of jihadi groups, the involvement of external actors & more.’
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Published by Oxford University Press in 2018, this short book (only 167 pages) is part of a class offered virtually by DC's Politics & Prose Bookstore titled ‘A Ten-Year Retrospective of the Arab Uprisings: 2010-2020) with Heba F. El-Shazli.

I liked it because of its brevity, the question and answer format it applies throughout the book and that it stayed away from past history concentrating instead on the ten years following the thwarted 2010 Arab Spring and how the events of those days have translated into today's reality for those living in the Middle East and out of it and the role the United States (particularly the Obama administration) played in how the region got to what it is today and where it is headed in the future.


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Seriously when Bethanne from @dearbookmaven & Hannah Oliver Depp from @loyaltybooks were raving about "When No One Is Watching" by Alyssa Cole on Monday, they were SPOT ON — It. Is. So. Good! —No wonder it was nearly on every list of best 2020 books.

Chilling thriller. Had to continuously stop reading to catch my breath and reassure myself that it’s fiction because EVERYTHING about it felt uncomfortably close to something that could actually happen ‘when no one is watching’.

Won’t give details for fear I’d be giving it away. However, the book’s jacket describes it as a thriller in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighbourhood takes on a sinister new meaning after a push to ‘revitalise’ the community may be more deadly than advertised, when born & raised Brooklyn resident Sydney Green observes that her neighbourhood seems to change every time she blinks and the neighbours she’s known all her life are disappearing. So, where do people actually go when gentrification pushes them out?

In the epigraph, Alyssa Cole quotes W.E.B Bu Bois: ‘One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over...the difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.’
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I feel an imminent film 😎

Can’t wait to receive this wonderful book by the very inspiring Alya Mooro to add to my shelves. Her interview with Afikra on this miserably cold & wet Virginia day was nuanced, engaging & really fun.

‘The Greater Freedom’ by Alya Mooro is all about being who you really want to be free from restriction or fear of repercussions. Part memoir & part social exploration, the author talks about the pull she felt growing between two cultures (Arab & British). Through personal experience & interviews with other Middle Eastern women she gives voice to women under pressure to conform to society’s ideals of how a woman should look & behave, what she should want and be.

The book was released in 2019. As a follow up the author has recently launched a newsletter entitled ‘The Greater Conversation Newsletter' - a newsletter centring female Middle Eastern experiences. It’s awesome!

And if you’re into podcasts, she’s got one of those with co-presenter Nasri Atallah called ‘Bootleg Magic’

Here are the eight titles that have caught the interests of the BookFabulous family over & over this month. We’re positive you’ll love them too.

Top shelf (L-R)
1. “A Bed for the King’s Daughter’ by Shahla Ujayli, translated by Sawad Hussein, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Univer
2. “We Free the Stars” by Hafsah Faizal, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3. “Barra and Zaman: Reading Egyptian Modernity in Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy” by Youssef Rakha (Palgrave Pivot)

Middle shelf (L-R)
1. “Bride of the Sea” by Eman Quotah, Tin House
2. “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’ by George Saunders, Random House

Bottom shelf (L-R)
1. “Aftershocks” by Nadia Owusu,  Simon & Schuster
2. “Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi, Penguin
3. “The ardent Swarm” by Yamen Manai, Amazon Publishing

​If you’ve asked yourself a million times over why people vote the way they do with what appears to be little disregard for obvious facts or basic moral values, then "Why Do They Vote That Way?" by Jonathan Haidt is one book you’ll want to pick up.

To understand what drives the rift that divides the populace between liberal & conservative the world over, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has spent 25 years examining the moral foundations that undergird & inform two differing world views: the political left & right who each place different values of importance on order, care, fairness, loyalty, authority & liberty. And how these ingrained moral systems (& their ranking) have deeply estranged conservatives & liberals from one another.

This 53-page Vintage Short Penguin Random House is a standalone published excerpt from the author’s 2013 book ‘The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion’ (530 pages) in which he writes about how he developed ‘The Moral Foundations Theory’ to explain “why people in different societies & different social classes often disagree about what is right and wrong” in a bid to understanding “the miracle of human cooperation.”

Available ONLY as an ebook. I purchased my copy from Books-A-Million

I’ve had ‘Darius the Great Is Not Okay’ by Adib Khorram on my radar since it was first published in 2018. Well, thanks to a buddy read with @teachingtheapocalypse I’m loving this tender Young Adult novel about Darius Keller, an American teenager who identifies as ‘a Fractional Persian’ from his mum’s side. The story centres around his first trip to Iran with his sister and parents to meet his grandparents for the first time. It’s published by Penguin Books and has been optioned for film.

Darius has clinical depression and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents is proving a problem, for one because he speaks better Klingon than he does Farsi. However, the best part of his visit is when he meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and the two become instant friends. Through this friendship specifically (both have father issues) and being in Iran generally (the family, the sights, the food, & taarof), Darius (aka Darioush) begins to feel that he might be much better than okay.
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​“Summer Brother” by Japp Robben, trans. from the Dutch by David Doherty. World Editions (288p) - released February 9, 2021
 
Jaap Robben’s second novel, translated from the Dutch by David Doherty, is the tender tale of the bond between brothers. Set to release February 2021 by World Editions, “Summer Brother” is the tale of thirteen-year-old Brian, who since his parents’ divorce, lives with his odds job, detached dad, Maurice, in a run-down trailer that they rent from two shady brothers Jean and Brown Henri. A new tenant, Emile, has just moved in to the trailer close to Brian’s. Lucien, Brian’s brother, lives in a group home due to congenital mental and physical disability. His unresponsiveness to his brother’s interactions with him represents Brian with conflicting thoughts on whether his brother actually exists beyond the days when he sees him.
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​Quickly, things deteriorate not only for Maurice when his landlords threaten to evict him if he does not pay his accumulating rent, but also with Brian, who, as reliable as ever, nonetheless struggles to juggle his duties between keeping a constant eye on his brother and his guilty feelings when he leaves him alone to visit with Selma, never mind the disastrous consequences that incure. His only possible solace in all this is Emile, who he seems to develop an attachment to but Maurice’s instant dislike of Emile only adds embers to a raging novel headed towards what threatens to be a complete and utter scorcher.
 
“Summer Brother” is on some level a very sad, at times distressing novel not only with regards the harsh world that some teenagers exist in, especially when surrounded by damaged role models specifically and disengaged adults generally, but also on how disability impacts the family system as well as society’s response when it comes face to face with it. The disability can consume a disproportionate share of a family's resources of time, energy, and money, so that other individual and family needs go unmet coupled with the guilt when assistance is required, all contributing to marital homes buckling under the pressure as in the case of Brian’s family. That said, though, the novel is an equally warm, humorous, and deeply affective one in which all the characters feel believable.  The writer, and in turn the translator, opts for sparse language and candid humor to handle a novel with sensitive themes centered on disability, sex and even poop-filled diapers, with a respect and a nuance that steers clear of melodrama and stereotype.
 
Readers cannot help but root for Brian and Lucien’s summer and what might prove to be a once in a lifetime chance at creating a shared memory. Despite the shocking end, readers, and this one in particular, are left reminded of the undeniable truth that for love -- a complicated concept in and of itself that people demonstrate differently -- to subsist, the ingredients don’t have to be perfect. “Summer Brother” makes for a perfect Book Club Choice (check out a list of questions by the publisher HERE)
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Jaap Robben is a poet, playwright, performer, and acclaimed children's author. "You Have Me to Love", his first novel for adults won the 2014 Dutch Booksellers Award, the Dioraphte Prize, and the ANV Award for best Dutch debut. Robben was chosen as one of the featured debut authors at the 2018 Brooklyn Book Festival. "Summer Brother" is a bestseller in the Netherlands and is his second novel.

David Doherty studied English and literary linguistics in the UK before moving to the Netherlands, where he has been translating all manner of Dutch texts since 1996. He was commended by the jury of the 2017 Vondel Translation Prize for Marente de Moor's (The Dutch Maiden) and Jaap Robben's "You Have Me to Love" and was runner-up in 2019 for his translation of "Monte Carlo" by Peter Terrin.

Translated by Joyce Zonana from the French, Tobie Nathan’s part fantastical fable, part realistic history is on the one hand a tempestuous love story between the sensuous dancer & singer Masreya & ruffian turned business man/fixer Zohar. On the other hand it is an account of Cairo’s Jewish community from the early 1920s until its ‘exodus’ in the late 50s.

A story of two lovers unfolds against the backdrop of a country struggling against British occupation, a World War, a crumbling monarchy, Communism vs rising religious fanaticism, a region’s discovery of black oil & Palestine’s partition followed by Arab/Israeli wars that would all together challenge the notion of ‘a real Egyptian’

A compelling all-encompassing tale that uncovers the nitty gritty of people’s daily lives, living peaceably side by side sharing language & superstitions, hopes & dreams, within the Muslim, Coptic & Jewish communities, rich & poor, to weave a closer than ever before picture on the ‘first time, since the Pharaohs of antiquity, Egypt was about to become Egyptian.’

It’s rich, masterfully translated, & complex yet also funny, sensitive and moving. It vibrates with an energy that is in tandem with the vibrancy of a city known to most as ‘Umm el Dunya’ aka ‘Mother of the World’.

Read an excerpt from the 2020 novel published by Seagull Books at The Markaz Review
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'Unlocking Doors of Cinema' (2019), the first feature-length documentary by Abu Dhabi resident and associate professor at Zayed University, filmmaker and director, Nezar Andary, sheds light on the grand master of Arab auteur cinema, Syrian filmmaker Muhammad Malas. Here's my review published recently in The Markaz Review (click HERE to read)

Long before Covid-19 captured every single headline in early 2020, ‘American Dirt’ by Jeanine Cummins was having its fair/unfair spot in the limelight. Many were up in arms at Macmillan for extending 6 figures to a writer for a story she was later accused ‘was not hers to tell’. Since then the industry & readers have collectively listened, learned & actively pushed for supporting #ownvoices literature while also continuing the debate whether in fact storytelling is for anyone with a story to tell; real or imagined.

Therefore, and to this latter point, I imagine that Simon And Schuster went ahead to release in August 2020, Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s latest ‘The New American’ which much like ‘American Dirt’, tells the story of Central American characters’ plight crossing into ‘American soil’. Although the author in this case is a woman of color, yet she also has no ties to Central America. Her parents did however immigrate from Saudi Arabia to the US when she was a baby & she is currently the founder & creative director of the online digital storytelling project ‘The New American Storytelling Project’ (NASP)

One thing is certain: ‘The New American’ is exquisite literary writing - subdued & measured. Think TV documentary rather than Hollywood blockbuster. It is also a gripping, harrowing & heartbreaking read that brings to the forefront the anguish & ugliness of deportation & immigration. However, it is SO closely similar to ‘American Dirt’ in so many ways that disregarding a comparison is impossible while reading it & that’s what I found jarred my own enjoyment of the book.

‘The New American’ is a novel about Emilio, a young Guatemalan Berkeley college student - a ‘Dreamer’ - who on turning 17 learns a shocking secret his parents had kept from him: he is an undocumented. Caught by ICE following a car accident, he is deported back to Guatemala where no sooner does he arrive than he sets out to return home to California. His treacherous route takes him across thousands of miles & eventually the Sonoran Desert of the US-Mexico border. The story is inspired by interviews with Central American refugees.

When readers first meet seventeen-year-old Muslim biracial Khayyam Maquet on the first page of Samira Ahmed’s latest YA novel, ‘Mad Bad & Dangerous to Know’, she’s in Paris, on her family’s annual month-long stay in the City of Love ‘staring at her phone screen, looking for love but knowing it’s not going to show up’. Khayyam’s life is in teen chaos: she’s unsure where she stands with her boyfriend Zaid, her submission for an essay contest on a lost Delacroix painting gifted to Alexandre Dumas supposedly screwed up her chances of getting into her dream college, she’s ‘captive’ in a humid city in which ‘air-conditioning is mostly aspirational’ and her best friend Julie is on a ‘dark-ages, technology-free’ family holiday and is thus unreachable. Essentially, where Kayyam would rather be is at home, in Chicago, ‘stewing in self-doubt and woe-is-me pity’.

However, a coincidental encounter, right on the heels of an unfortunate incident involving her All-Stars, with the sixth great grandson of Alexandre Dumas, also called Alexandre Dumas, changes everything. A few years older than Khayyam and on his second year at the École de Louvre, he might just be the one to help her turn her fortunes around. So she takes a chance and tells him all about her essay and together they agree to pursue the search for the lost painting – aided by material from his uncle - in order for Khayyam to redeem herself and get a second chance at proving her worth as a future art historian to dragon head judge Celenia Mondego.

The novel then shifts to Muslim teen Leila, raised two hundred years ago in the Pasha’s harem as his ‘Haseki’. As she tells her own story, we learn of an extraordinary woman, supposedly the muse behind some of the 19th Century’s greatest art and literary works by Delacroix, Dumas and Lord Byron; a woman who in her desire to be free and in her refusal to allow her name to be ‘buried under dirt’ risks everything. 

As Khayyam and Alexandre try to unravel the Parisian mystery of the missing Delacroix painting and as they stumble to make the connection with Laila’s role in the story, their own romantic drama plays out. Despite their obvious attraction to each other, we discover that one of them may not have been honest about the real personal motives driving them to solve what seems to be a despairing mystery.

And now, let there be no doubt that Khayyam – named after Sufi poet Omar Khayyam – is a kick ass fierce female character - a sassy American Indian version of Nancy Drew. Despite the predictable teen dramas and dramatic young love woes, this is a teen very woke on issues such as Orientalism, Colonialism and Feminism. She is a champion of women’s voices and Leila could not have hoped for a more passionate, most ferocious female advocate for her story. Samira Ahmed excels at tracing ‘the lives of two young women fighting to write their own stories and escape the pressure of cultural expectations in worlds too long defined by men’.

Also, racial themes and the notion of ‘otherness’ permeate the novel. Many forget that writer Alexandre Dumas’ father was bi-racial: son to a Noble French father and a slave Haitian mother. Although Alexandre Dumas (the first) got to return to France with his father, he suffered much racial discrimination and when he opted to join the army, he was urged to adopt his mother’s name – Dumas – to avoid embarrassing his father. His son, also named Alexandre Dumas, one of France’s greatest writers, was only permitted burial in the Pantheon in 2002, because he was Black.

The novel is great for fans of art history, romance, and historical fiction. Ages 14 - Adult, 336 pages

The author, Nejoud Al-Yagout, spins a psychologically charged tale, 'When the Haboob Sings', around the consequences individuals in a hypocritical society face when they dare to be themselves or to say what they think. All it took in the case of the novel’s protagonist, Dunya Khair, was one article –an ‘unsafe’ one – to create an uproar in a society dominated by its male counterparts, used to shuttering away female dissent. Ironically, when her controversial article is published, it barely causes a ripple in the echelons, until a male cleric responds to it, propelling her into notoriety. She is faced with the dissolution of familial ties, the collapse of her sham marriage, a looming nervous breakdown and solitary imprisonment in a filthy cell where readers meet her for the first time at the start of the book.

The author’s cautionary tale is set in an unnamed Arab country although the general themes in the novel are most assuredly universal – gender equality, sexuality, patriarchy and religion. The author succeeds in creating the dramatic tension that ensues when one woman dares to break from the mold and air the dirty laundry. It is then that we see the violent backlash of a society that appears to the West as progressive with a ruling family that is known to be ‘très modern’.
 
What did not work in the novel for me was that the first person narrative limited the story to the narrator’s perspective. We were only privy to what Dunya was thinking and saying and how the world was reacting from her point of view alone. No other voices were there to corroborate her story or to defy it. Even when her far from perfect family blew hot and cold, we had no clue as to their personal journeys leading to their changed attitudes except for what Dunya was telling us. For such weighty issues as those the book deals with, there should have been more dialogue and more points of view so we don’t end up with pockets of one-sided repetitive psycho-babble.
 
That said, fully immersing the reader into the machinations of Dunya’s thought process and emotional roller coaster, her beliefs, desires, hates and love, has the effect of creating a haboob – a dust storm – an act that feels intimate and claustrophobic, disquieting and disorienting all at the same time. Readers feel everything Dunya feels and ultimately they become her, caught in the whirl and twirl of the stormy events of her life, dizzied and disoriented. The aftermath of this 207-page ‘Haboob’ is that readers, those like me still reeling from the book’s ending, will have a hard time shaking off ‘the story of a woman whose unshakeable resolve to preserve her authenticity costs her more than she ever imagined’.

The first time I read Adele Parks was in 2013 when I was on a flight from London to Abu Dhabi. I'd downloaded 'The State We're In' mainly because I'm a nervous flyer and reckoned a romantic plot between two strangers who meet on a plane could just be the ideal antidote to hold at bay a baseless, senseless fear that I'd developed out of nowhere. Fast forward several years and I'm happy to report that although my anxieties over flying have acutely diminished, my initial awe at Adele Parks's masterful genius at weaving extraordinary stories from the humdrum of the every day has not. Her 19th novel 'Lies Lies Lies' comes out in September and is as wild a ride as there'll ever be this Fall Season.

Her latest offering 'Lies Lies Lies', out next month, centres around Simon and Daisy who've been married for 17 years and have a six-year-old daughter Millie who despite her young years seems destined to become a ballerina. Simon, an interior designer, and Daisy, a teacher, are not only successful at their jobs but are surrounded by a network of supportive friends they've known since uni. But, despite the seeming outwardly perfection of the family, from the get-go readers are thrown hints that behind this family's closed doors things are not so great as one chapter after the other chisels at the perfection until it shatters into a million tiny pieces. 

Simon is a functioning alcoholic (not a spoiler trust me) and Daisy is the ever dutiful wife who lives in the hope that nobody finds out. Delusional? absolutely. Saintly? Not by any stretch. For, as we move on in the novel, not only do the roots of Daisy's insecurities, struggles with her self-esteem, and pursuit of perfection surface but what emerges is also a portrait of a woman who, just like her husband, not only harbours secrets but also obsessively - maybe even selfishly - goes after what she wants regardless the consequences or the price albeit for very different reasons.

Besides Simon and Daisy, we have a large cast of characters presented in the family and friends that surround the couple and it seems that birds of a feather do flock together. Despite the disparity in the friends' financial status, they are a tight knit group who have known each other for a long time and whose children are growing up together and look to each other as surrogate siblings rather than mere friends. They all seem to think that they know one another more than they know themselves but of course, we realise as do the characters, that everything with time changes and they are no longer sure of who the person they are dealing with really is like when all is said and done - this is particularly evident in how they react towards the novel's major traumatic incident and the persons involved in it when it takes place. 

So what's the novel really about? although the title is in itself self-explanatory, the novel is so multi-layered: marriage, addiction, friendship, trauma and memory, and ultimately second chances. As a domestic thriller, it is packed to the brim with twists and turns although at one point I started wanting less of both especially towards the end of the novel where too many twists left me feeling that the writing became more concerned with the shock factor than the characters' developmental arch. But that's just me nit-picking.

That said, all in all a very entertaining read.

The book will be published in the UK, September 5, 2019

​BookFabulous is over the moon for the triumph of 'The Watermelon Boys' by Iraqi-Welsh author Ruqaya Izzidien whose book we raved about on the BookFabulous Instagram feed just before its publication. The author was one of six winners to receive the 2019 Betty Trask Award bestowed annually by the Society of Authors presented for a first novel by a writer under 35. Judged by Ben Brooks, Elanor Dymott and Vaseem Khan, its past winners include Zadie Smith, David Szalay, Hari Kunzru and Sarah Waters.
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'The Watermelon Boys' is an intelligent and well-crafted re-telling of the role the civilians of the Middle East played during WWI to secure independence from Ottoman rule and define present day borders. 

The novel is set in Iraq, a country like most of its neighbours at the time joined the ranks of the British forces after assurances that once the war was won, the British would assist the country in securing independence from Ottoman rule. As such, the novel follows the lives of watermelon seller Ahmad and his family who cross paths with Welsh teenager Carwyn, who enlists in the Mesopotamia Campaign after a fallout with his abusive stepfather. Soldier Carwyn and civilian-turned-freedom fighter Ahmad form the backbone to a novel that sets itself apart by refreshingly focusing on a tale told from the point of view of the indigenous peoples of the Middle East as opposed to that of the colonialists'. The novel as such highlights the Baghdadis' role in the establishment of present day Iraq and how the political and social attitudes at the time mired its independence with instabilities that continue well into present day history.

​'This award is so rewarding to me because it feels like a victory for Arab voices and stories,' Izzidien told Hoopoe, the publishers of her book. 'It is proof that the English-language literary scene stands a lot to gain from harnessing and promoting the lesser-told stories, even, and especially, when they challenge our comfort and our prevailing narratives'.

Hosted by poet Jackie Kay MBE, with an introduction by the President of the SoA, Philip Pullman, 9 awards were presented to 32 writers with a host of debut names joining established award-winning writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry each sharing a prize fund of £100,000. The awards were announced at a ceremony at Southwark Cathedral in the UK.

In a statement speaking about the Society of Authors’ Awards, Jackie Kay said:
'I'm enormously proud and gratified to have been granted this most lovely opportunity of presenting writers with the Society of Authors’ Awards. These awards, I know from personal experience, are potentially life-changing. They bring writers in from the cold. They give writers a huge boost and validation. They tell them that their trials and tribulations have been worth it after all, after the long haul. Writing is a confidence game, and often writers' confidence is shot to pieces. An award like this can put self-doubt in the cupboard for a while'.
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Pursued by the master's ferocious 'pathologically alive' mastiff, the novella not only records this hopeless escape but also serves to remind readers of the demonic cruelty of the slave trade in which injustices continue to cry out well beyond the graves.

Along the very short span of the escape, all three characters - the old slave, the master and the mastiff - experience a mystical metamorphosis induced by the unforgiving oppressive environment of the rainforest that transforms them forever.

​Here's what the fiction jury for the award had to say: “In turns biblical and mythical, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man is a powerful reckoning with the agonies of the past and their persistence into the present. It is a modern epic, a history of the Caribbean, and a tribute to Creole languages, all told through the story of one slave old man. Linda Coverdale’s translation sings as she beautifully renders language as lush and vividly alive as the wilderness the old man plunges into in his flight to freedom.

It is dreamy yet methodical prose, vivid, sensual but also a touch strange, forcing you to slow down and reread. Thoughtful, considered footnotes provide added context and explanation, enriching the reader’s understanding of this powerful and subversive work of genius by a master storyteller. Slave Old Man is a thunderclap of a novel. His rich language, brilliant in Coverdale’s English, evokes the underground forces of resistance that carry the slave old man away. It’s a novel for fugitives, and for the future.”
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​What worked:
Absolutely all of it. Found it a wonderful feat of translation. My advice is to read the Translator's Note at the beginning of the book as well as the notes at the back of the book to get a deeper understanding of the Carribean history. These notes are like stories within stories and add to the fairytale overtone of the novel.
Although I'm not usually a fan of switching tenses in a novel - which happens abruptly on page 66 of this novel - I found the decision completely justifiable and totally fitting for circumstance. It was so well executed and timed that the reader knows that there is no way the novel could have proceeded in any other way.
Beautiful book cover.

What didn't work:
Maybe the fact that I had to turn back to the notes instead of having them as a footnote on the same page. However, this is so minor and did in no way diminish my enjoyment of the novel or its flow.

Who would I recommend it to?
For readers who enjoy world literature in translation as well as for those curious about the history of slavery in the Martinique. Also great for patient readers for this is not a fast read despite the novel's short length. It contains detailed descriptive paragraphs on the natural world as well as streams of consciousness.

​Independent Bookstore Day (aka Indie Bookstore Day) in the US is a one day only event and it falls on the last Saturday of April (April 27 this year). In its fifth year now, this is a great opportunity for the community to show the love and offer support to their favourite local bookstores.

It started in California in 2014 before becoming the national party it is today. But in addition to authors, live music, cupcakes, scavenger hunts, kids events, art tables, readings, barbecues, contests, and other fun stuff, there are exclusive books and literary items that you can only get on that day. Not before. Not after. Not online. And this year, a 'Book Crawl' is on the agenda so you can book yourself silly!

Bookstores and organisations in various locations in the US are having what is known as a 'Book Crawl' - think Pub Crawl only without so much alcohol although some will be on offer at certain venues -  Austin, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Connecticut, Indiana, Rhode Island, San Diego, The San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St Louis, Tucson, The Twin Cities, Vermont and Washington DC are all having their own version.

How does it work? Well, in the case of the DC Bookstore Crawl - which is the one I'll be attempting -  participants aim to visit all ten participating DC bookstores on Saturday 27 by following the Bookstore Crawl Map which they can pick up at any participating bookstore or print one out HERE. Participants must get their map stamped at each location.

The map also entitles participants to discounts at many bookstores and cafés, including buy-one-get-one-free drinks at Peregrine Coffee. If you visit all ten bookstores, you win eternal glory and a limited-edition IBD tote!

However, if you're not up for that, here are some of the other cool events I've found in the DC Metro Area.

ALEXANDRIA
Hooray for Books Bookstore
From 10am – 8pm
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They are hosting the 2019 Love Our Local Authors Festival (LOLA) that invites more than 20 authors/illustrators to present and sign their books in the bookshop as well as conduct a series of panel discussions and talks - See the full schedule HERE.
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VIENNA
Bards Alley Bookstore
​• An all day community-wide book hunt beginning at 9:00 am, with 100 books hidden in and around participating businesses. Use the hashtag #BardsAlleyBookHunt2019 to join in on the fun!
• An all day in-store scavenger hunt for all ages beginning at 10:00 am, with prizes throughout the day!
• 10:30 am-11:00 am: A visit from children’s author Barbara Carroll Roberts, author of the middle grade novel, NIKKI ON THE LINE (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, March 2019)
• 11:00-11:30 am: A literature themed concert with children’s musician Groovy Nate! Groovy Nate is a children’s entertainer who creates fun and educational shows using exotic musical instruments, comedy, and puppet skits—a la Sesame Street meets Parliament/Funkadelic, meshed with The Electric Company, Kraftwerk, and Dub Reggae.
• 2:00-3:00 pm: Portrait drawing with children’s book illustrator Zara Gonzalez Hoang!
• 5:00-6:00 pm: Live music, special drinks, and board games.

FALLS CHURCH
One More Page Bookstore
• The Bookseller Bake-Off from 3 pm - 4 pm
• Sip & Swoon from 4 pm - 6 pm
• Exclusive IBD books and literary items
• Branded OMP merchandise
• "Battle of the Books": For this year's Independent Bookstore Day, the OMP staff is sharing some of their favourite books - and competing to see whose picks sell the most! They’re offering a 10% discount for online purchases of their choice books plus a free mystery gift, too! (check link: https://www.onemorepagebooks.com/battle-books)
• Scavenger Hunt
• Selfie Station
• Hourly Raffles
• Libro.fm Audiobook Specials