Archive for April, 2012
Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan
Edugyan’s second novel is not only a gripping page-turner but beautifully written. Narrated by Sid Griffiths, a Baltimore jazz musician living in Nazi Berlin in 1939, the voice thrums like his deep string bass in flawless syncopated rhythms. The novel begins in Paris in 1940. Listen to the sound of Edugyan’s language as Sid describes a […]
St Petersburg – city of stories
I have just returned from chilly St Petersburg with its frozen canals, brilliant sunshine, sudden snowstorms, and the vast Neva River. I’ve always wanted to visit partly because I am fascinated by Russian history but mostly because I’ve always loved Russian literature and music. I’m thinking here of Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Tolstoy , Turgenev, Nabokov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Bulgakov, Shostakovich, […]
