racism - Comfortably Numb

Book review: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

Working class hero We are back in Sahotaland, in this his fourth book, The Spoiled Heart. His Booker shortlisted second book, The Year of the Runaways was about three migrants, the horrors that force them to leave their homeland and their struggles in the UK. In his next book, China Room, longlisted for the Booker,…

Column: From Austria without much love

From Austria, without much love The first indication that things were going to go off the beaten track came while I was prepping for a trip to Austria. I`d asked my TA to find me a day trip to Hallstatt, the postcard-pretty Alpine village. My TA, bless her, got to work but kept reporting that…

Book review: The Promise by Damon Galgut

THE PROMISE by Damon Galgut. Penguin UK Books. Halfway through the book, the protagonist makes a statement: But a promise is a promise. And this 2021 Booker Prize-winning book by South African writer Damon Galgut has that promise as its pivot. A promise made to a dying wife by her distraught husband, that their longtime…

Book review: The Atlas of Reds and Blues by Devi S Laskar

R is for racism `Where are you really from?` That question, with its inherent prejudice and bias, lies at the heart of Devi S. Laskar’s debut novel, The Atlas Of Blues And Reds. It is not the American Dream but the American nightmare of racism that is centrestage here. At the start of the story,…