Recent content by shaunrandol

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    Abdellah Taia: An Arab Melancholia

    Abdellah Taïa is Morocco’s highest profile gay writer, a point underscored in the accompanying blurb to his recently translated An Arab Melancholia. Since the book is billed as an autobiographical novel, one might expect—wrongly, it turns out—a gut-wrenching exposition of the existential dilemma...
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    Kjersti A. Skomsvold - The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am

    If melancholy can be sweet, then The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am (Dalkey, 2011) is just that. Kjersti A. Skomsvold’s debut novel, which won Norway’s Tarjei Vesaas's debutantpris (2009), provides a brief, sentimental glimpse into what it means to be lonely. The gloom of such a weighty (and...
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    Ludvík Vaculík - The Guinea Pigs

    Ludvík Vaculík’s novel The Guinea Pigs is charming and unsettling at the same time. From the outset, Vaculík disarms the reader by treating the tale as if it were being read to us by a parent at bedtime. “Our family,” the protagonist tells us, “is originally from the country. Our family...
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    Atiq Rahimi: A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

    Review originally published in Words Without Border (link here) A THOUSAND ROOMS OF DREAM AND FEAR: Translated from the Dari by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari Other Press, 2010 The modern history of Afghanistan is a tapestry rent and torn by invasions and internal conflict, both political...
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    Xiaoda Xiao: The Cave Man

    I reviewed Xiaoda Xiao's premiere novel, The Cave Man, for The Mantle. It draws on the experience of him and his friends who spent time in Chinese prisons and labor camps under Mao, and then had to re-assimilate into Chinese society. Opening of the review: Xiaoda Xiao?s novel, The Cave Man...
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    Taslima Nasrin: Revenge

    From my review published in Words Without Borders (original posting) A stalwart advocate for freedom of speech, Taslima Nasrin is an exiled political and artistic refugee who has had her share of literary revenge. Despite her work being banned in Bangladesh and India, and even as multiple...
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    Patricia Schonstein Pinnock: Skyline

    Patricia Schonstein Pinnock's slim novel, Skyline, has just been reviewed, or shall I say revisited, on The Mantle. This in light of fears of xenophobic violence rearing its ugly head post-World Cup. INTRO: For Cape Town, South Africa, the World Cup may have come and gone, but some things...
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    Alberto Ruy-Sánchez: The Secret Gardens of Mogador

    Alberto Ruy-S?nchez's The Secret Gardens of Mogador explores the depths of sensuality found in the nurture of nature. In a modern take on the role of Scheherazade, the narrator of this erotic novella is charged with finding the gardens of a semi-mythical town and describing their intricacies...
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    Phaswane Mpe: Welcome to Our Hillbrow

    A review of Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow An excerpt: Welcome to Our Hillbrow follows the story of Refent?e, ?child of Tiragalong,? and several of his close friends and family members. Having moved to Johannesburg to begin his tertiary education, Refent?e ends up staying with...
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    PEN World Voices 2010 - Opening Night Extravaganza

    Reviews of PEN World Voices Festival 2010 in NYC can be found on The Mantle Click here: PEN 2010 | The Mantle
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    Pablo Neruda: Fully Empowered

    Here's my take on Neruda's bilingual Fully Empowered, posted originally on The Mantle: Quick Review: Fully Empowered by Pablo Neruda | The Mantle Somewhere I had read (or at least I think I had read) that Neruda preferred that his poetry be read aloud. And why not? Poets throughout time, from...
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    Pens and Swords - Debating the role of the writer in conflict zones

    In The Mantle's second virtual roundtable, three acclaimed authors and poets from around the world ponder the weighty question, what is the role of the writer in a conflict zone? With intimate knowledge of the trauma and mental anguish so many writers face when laboring in the face of adversity...
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    Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient

    A recently published essay on The Mantle actually examines four of Ondaatje's novels: Divisadero, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil's Ghost. Enjoy... The Art of Looking Back In the contemporary literary imagination, few authors can claim to have the immediate emotive...
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    Michael Ondaatje: Anil's Ghost

    A recently published essay on The Mantle actually examines four of Ondaatje's novels: Divisadero, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil's Ghost. Enjoy... The Art of Looking Back In the contemporary literary imagination, few authors can claim to have the immediate emotive...
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    Michael Ondaatje: Divisadero

    A recently published essay on The Mantle actually examines Divisadero and three other Ondaatje novels (In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil's Ghost). Enjoy... The Art of Looking Back In the contemporary literary imagination, few authors can claim to have the immediate emotive...
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