Menu Close

Page 4 of 7

An Icelandic cookery book

Advertisement

When we went to the Fish Market restaurant in Reykjavik, we had the best food we have ever had. Of course, we couldn't resist buying the restaurant's cookbook! The recipes are by Icelandic celebrity chef Hrefna Rósa Sætran.

Read more

Book tip: El Choco by Markus Lutteman

Advertisement

Markus Lutteman's 'El Choco' is not a literary experience. But it is a fascinating journey into a world that is best experienced from a distance. After a failed drug smuggling operation, Jonas Andersson ends up in the notorious San Pedro prison in Bolivia. There are no locks on the cells and no guards. The violent and armed prisoners rule the roost.

Read more

Book tip: Moments that change life

Advertisement

Last read: Annika Östberg's account of her 28 years in an American prison and her journey to and from there. Initially, we meet a 13-year-old who is unhappy in her new home country, runs away from home, meets the wrong boys and gets hooked on drugs. Annika is sentenced to "25 years to life" for accessory to murder.

Read more

Book tip: Himmelsdalen by Marie Hermansson

Advertisement

Himmelsdalen, by Marie Hermansson, is defined as a suspense novel. And indeed, this is a page-turner! Swedish Daniel receives a letter from his twin brother Max, who is in a "rehabilitation clinic" in the Alps. Daniel travels to visit his brother at the exclusive clinic, but soon discovers that nothing is as it first seemed.

Read more

Book tip: Almost home by Jean Kwok

Advertisement

I have read the book "Almost Home" by Jean Kwok. When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to the United States, they think they will be better off. Instead, they end up in an unimaginable slum in Brooklyn: an apartment with no heat, but with cockroaches and mice, and work around the clock.

Read more

Book tip: Travelling in Sharialand by Tina Thunander

Advertisement

During my flu season I have been reading Tina Thunander's "Travelling in Sharialand. A report on women's lives in Saudi Arabia". Tina is quite lost when she lands in the kingdom, but is soon given a lesson in the state of affairs by the Ministry of Information's envoy.

Read more

Book tip: Stalin's Cows by Sofi Oksanen

Advertisement

When I read Sofi Oksanen's Purge, I found her storytelling to be magical. Her debut novel Stalin's Cows did not disappoint either. The language here is perhaps even more straightforward, and a little less polished, as it rushes across the pages.

Read more

Book recommendation: Morning in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Advertisement

Morning in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, can be seen as a contribution to the infected Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as an outside media consumer it is difficult to understand all aspects of it. However, it is not difficult to follow the protagonist Amal and how her increasingly decimated family makes its way through decades of conflict, war, displacement and refugeeism.

Read more

Book tip: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Advertisement

I started reading Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay, and then I didn't want to put it down. When the French police knock on Sarah's family's door in Paris in 1942, she hides her little brother in the closet, locks the door and puts the key in her pocket ...

Read more

Book Tip: Niceville by Kathryn Stockett

Advertisement

I have just read, and can recommend, Niceville by Kathryn Stockett. The book follows three women, the white socialite Skeeter and the two black maids Aibileen and Minny, in the American South in the 1960s.

Read more