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Jan 15, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Estelle Shirbon |Caroline Moorehead |Thomas de Waal |Heather White
In early 1982 Ethiopia’s socialist military regime, the Derg, launched an offensive against Eritrean insurgents fighting for independence in what was then a northern province of Ethiopia. The Red Star campaign, as it was called, involved months of all-out military assaults on the rebels’ stronghold at Nakfa, in Eritrea’s arid Sahel mountains, and a propaganda blitz glorifying Ethiopia’s socialist revolution and vilifying the insurgents as imperialist stooges.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Thomas de Waal |Estelle Shirbon |Caroline Moorehead |Heather White
People and Trees is a pastoral set in Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1940s. If that sounds dull, then do not be deceived: Akram Aylisli’s novel is anything but. Aylisli, who recently turned eighty-seven, is best known for Stone Dreams (2012; 2022 in English), a novel that challenged his country’s ethno-nationalist orthodoxy concerning its conflict with Armenia.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Heather White |Susie Mesure |Mia Levitin |Richard Lea
Lynne Tillman’s American Genius, a Comedy follows a woman over the course of a day during her stay in an artist’s retreat. The woman doesn’t use the term “artist’s retreat”, but she does call the people who are there with her “residents” or “fellows”. Each of them arrives and leaves at personally determined intervals; each issues elaborate dietary instructions to the beleaguered kitchen staff; and each, it transpires over time, practises a different arcane art.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Heather White
Welcome to the TLSWinner of the 2024 Niche Market Newspaper of the Year Award and proudly niche since 1902.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Anna Parker |Paul Winter |Heather White |Lauren Booker
When the First World War began in 1914, Prague was the third-largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Four years later it was the capital of an independent nation-state, the Czechoslovak Republic. Yet Prague did not experience fighting, and many of its citizens woke up on October 29, 1918 – the day after independence – to a new world that seemed strikingly similar to the old one.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
kwbu.org | Heather White
Have you heard of postcrossing? It's a global postcard exchange community where postcrossers send and receive postcards with people all over the world. Most people include a prompt on their profile, and many ask, what is your favorite book you've read this year. I have told postcrossers all over the world, my favorite book I've read this year, by far, is "North Woods," by Daniel Mason.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
kwbu.org | Heather White
If you are in the mood for a read that will haunt you this spooky season, I recommend the dark, and grotesque book, Tender is the flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. Bazterrica is an Argentinean author, this book was originally published in Spanish in 2017, and won the prestigious Clarín Novel Prize, it was translated into English in 2020. Tender is the Flesh is set in the near future. A virus has infected animals - and it can easily spread to humans.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
kwbu.org | Heather White
If you are in the mood for a read that will haunt you this spooky season, I recommend the dark, and grotesque book, Tender is the flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. Bazterrica is an Argentinean author, this book was originally published in Spanish in 2017, and won the prestigious Clarín Novel Prize, it was translated into English in 2020. Tender is the Flesh is set in the near future. A virus has infected animals - and it can easily spread to humans.
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May 23, 2024 | 
kwbu.org | Heather White |Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is an American Poet who won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Devotions is a collection of more than two hundred poems, selected and arranged by the poet herself. Oliver has included poems from all stages of her impressive and influential fifty-year career, spanning from nineteen sixty-three to two thousand fifteen. I would recommend this poetry collection to poetry lovers, obviously, but also to those who want to read poetry and don’t know where to start.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
kwbu.org | Heather White
This massive work of popular non-fiction chronicles the entire history of our species, spanning a nearly incomprehensible amount of time. Today, I am recommending the graphic adaptation of this book. At four hundred and sixty four pages, reading the original text of Sapiens is a significant undertaking. I am spinning too many plates to tackle a dense book of non-fiction, which is why I selected the graphic adaptation.
