Shirin Ebadi's Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran landed on my stack thanks to Ali's description of hearing her speak and reading the book. Ebadi's tone is resolved and declarative. This, her third book, chronicles her experiences in the years surrounding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's leadership
The dead fuel Jesmyn Ward's novels. She feels the weight of their stories; she shoulders them, shares them. In Sing, Unburied, Sing, their chorus of voices - even in the epigraphs but also in the novel - reverberates between and beyond the covers. Ward's are heart-shattering stories. But they
In which there is talk of novels which were read too quickly to allow for extensive note-taking and snapshots: good reading. Yewande Omotoso's The Woman Next Door (2017) Longlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize this year, this story about two women in their eighties, neighbours in South Africa, is quietly
"Since writing Love Medicine, I have understood that I am writing one long book in which the main chapters are also books titled Tracks, Four Souls, The Bingo Palace, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse and The Painted Drum. The characters appear and disappear in my
As with Tracks, the primary voices in Four Souls are Fleur's and Nanapush's. So, although it was published more than ten years later, I opted to read Four Souls next, to keep these characters fresher in mind and heart, hoping for a deeper understanding. Two other women play significant roles
