July 2009

The best women’s travel writing 2009 / edited by Lucy McCauley

Best womens travel writing

This award-winning series presents the finest accounts of women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples — and themselves.

The common threads connecting the stories are a woman’s perspective and lively storytelling to make the reader laugh, cry, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn’t. From breaking the gender barrier on a soccer field in Kenya to learning the art of French cooking in a damp cellar in the Loire Valley to hitchhiking through Mexico in the 1960s, the points of view and perspectives are global and the themes eclectic, including stories that encompass spiritual growth, hilarity and misadventure, high adventure, romance, solo journeys, stories of service to humanity, family travel, and encounters with exotic cuisine.

The weight of a mustard seed / Wendell Steavenson

Weight of a mustard seed What motivates a man to serve a leader like Saddam Hussein? How did Hussein’s men live and, most importantly, how did they live with themselves? General Kamel Sachet was one of these men: a respected commander in Saddam Hussein’s Special Forces,in charge of Kuwait City during Desert Storm, and a Governor in the province of Maysan. Over the course of four years in Baghdad, Wendell Steavenson came to know Sachet, his wife, and their nine children closely, and began to unravel their stories.

During a year in Baghdad searching for answers, Wendell Steavenson comes to know Sachet and his family intimately. She discovers a decorated military hero with a private conscience; his university-educated wife, withdrawn into the security of hijab; sons whose religious fervour becomes increasingly dangerous; and daughters with prospects subverted by war and tyranny.

 Nocturnes : five stories of music and nightfall / Kazuo Ishiguro

Nocturnes

Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of six novels, including Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day. In Nocturnes, a sublime story cycle, he explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the ‘hush-hush floor’ of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning.

Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life’s romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

The darkening glass / Paul Doherty

Darkening glass

Mathilde of Westminster must face a dangerous foe in the third novel in Paul Doherty’s acclaimed series. March 1312 and England is divided. Edward II is in conflict with his barons over royal favourite Gaveston, and Queen Isabella is momentously pregnant with the first union of Plantagenet and Capetian blood. Meanwhile, rebel Robert Bruce prowls the Scottish border seeking advancement. Mathilde of Westminster senses a challenge for the throne is imminent.

When the great Earls step up their campaign, the King and Queen are forced to flee to a fortified priory in Tynemouth, now vulnerable to the Scottish marauders on land and Bruce’s allies at sea. With threats all around, the royal party can only despair when one of their camp is murdered. Will Mathilde be able to find the perpetrator before the King loses control of the throne?

Burnt shadows / Kamila Shamsie

Burnt shadows

In August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki, Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later.

As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.

The leisure seeker / Michael Zadoorian

The Leisure Seeker By Michael ZadoorianThis is the unforgettable cross country journey of a runaway couple in their twilight years determined to meet the end of all roads on their own terms. This is the story of John and Ella Robina, a couple married 50+ years - she has stopped her cancer treatments, he has Alzheimer’s - who kidnap themselves from the adult children and the doctors who seem to run their lives, and steal off on a forbidden vacation. Each battling their own infirmities, John pilots their ‘78 Leisure Seeker RV (it’s the one with the left turn signal blinking) along the forgotten roads of Route 66 on a journey of rediscovery.

They’re not searching for America, but for a past that they’re having a damned hard time remembering these days.  It’s the story of Ella and John: the people they encounter, the problems they overcome, the lives they have lived , the love they share, and how their heartbreak at watching friends disappear into nursing homes inspired them to face the colossus at the end of all roads on their own terms.

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