A reviewer’s duty, before forming responses of any kind, is to read, and to read carefully. That responsibility begins from the moment the text is selected, whatever the seductions of the title, cover or writer. Anuradha Roy’s third novel is indeed seductively packaged. Sleeping on Jupiter revels in a very beautiful jacket and it is Read More
After the hijacking of the U.S.-flagged sailing vessel Quest in the Indian Ocean in February 2011, Corban Addison “watched the media coverage of the tragedy with a heavy heart and a curious eye”. It was that curiosity which led to his writing of The Tears of Dark Water. However, I must stress here (as the Read More
This novel takes one of the many, infinite silences of history and gives it a voice. The voice is that of our narrator, Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, and the story is ‘a true account of his life and travels from the city of Azemmur to the Land of the Indians, where he arrived Read More
Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel, The Gap of Time, is the first “cover version” in Hogarth Shakespeare’s series where writers including Margaret Atwood, Howard Jacobson and Anne Tyler re-tell Shakespeare’s plays to mark, in 2016, the 400th anniversary of his death. Winterson has The Winter’s Tale and, given its focus on abandonment, adoption and forgiveness, it’s Read More
In his first crack at a fantasy novel, Tom Fletcher delivers a wonderful blend of magic, myth and adventure. Gleam is the first instalment of Fletcher’s ‘The Factory’ trilogy. Fletcher’s vision of a dark and foul dystopian underworld pours out from every page and captivates the reader. Several elements of Fletcher’s writing, such as setting Read More
Graham Lironi makes a noteworthy contribution to the large quantities of crime fiction continuously being published with his short and entertaining mystery-thriller Oh Marina Girl. Lironi, once a student in Dundee, delivers a book which is rich in narrative skills, a strong sense of character and unpredictable plot twists- whilst taking a closer look at Read More
Volwys & Other Stories is a collection of science fiction stories, culminating in a novella entitled Volwys. Douglas Thompson has published eight books to a mostly divided critical reception, with reviewers undecided on whether or not his books are exemplary of the genre. Volwys & Other Stories definitely belongs to the science fiction genre, imaginatively Read More
Even for leading Edinburgh crime reporter, Doug McGregor – a man who lives off the brutality of others – the sight of his editor’s organs spilling onto the desk before him is not easily forgotten. Nor should it be, the killer’s shots announcing the start of a deadly race against time. No matter how random Read More
Scorper by Rob Manguson Smith is a novel centred around scorping – the act of scooping out excess wood when creating a carving or engraving – under the advisement that “the artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist”. In the Sussex town of Ditchling our Read More
The Persian-Dutch writer Kader Abdolah was an opponent of the regimes of both the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini, ultimately fleeing to the Netherlands as a political refugee in 1988. He has a degree in Physics, was Writer in Residence at Leiden University in 2006, and has written a large number of novels. The King (“De Read More