By host on
10/2/2011 3:01 PM
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By host on
12/1/2010 5:32 PM
 Calling Devyani Saltzman's Shooting Water a travel memoir is convenient but inadequate. More often found in our bookshop with other general memoirs or even in our film section, this gentle account of the birth of Deepa Mehta’s controversial film Water ascribes to the struggles of other fine non-fiction that finds itself everywhere and thus occasionally nowhere. It is the job of the bookseller to ensure that it, and other like-minded publications, are kept in mind and put into hands.
A memoir it is: a coming-of-age, an expression of creative growth, an account of an experience that is revealed to be both extraordinary and ordinary (or at least small) when Saltzman pulls back her focus from that tight personal perspective to acknowledge the seismic shifts that are taking place across the subcontinent. This narrative method... |
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By host on
10/6/2010 2:15 PM
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 You won't be visiting Pyongyang anytime soon. It's unlikely, yes? Unless, of course, you are one of those with a specific skill set currently in demand in the North Korean capital. I would go in a heartbeat but I have a strong feeling that a bookseller might not find much to occupy his time. Guy Delisle, a Canadian born animator and cartoonist now living in France is one such individual who in 2003 found his particular set of skills very much in demand.
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By host on
10/6/2010 11:35 AM
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 Mumbai was once, and still is to many, a mythical city on the Arabian Sea. The myth isn’t one of ancient forests where princes wander and it’s not one of blue gods appearing on battlefields. Mumbai was once, and still is to many, Bombay and it is in this myth of Bombay as a city of possibilities that Rohinton Mistry establishes in his 1995 novel A Fine Balance. Framed between the year of India’s independence from British rule and the end of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1977, Mistry unfolds the complex lives of four citizens of the city while introducing readers to the unique challenges they face as they attempt to navigate within a changing Indian society.
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By host on
7/31/2010 11:07 AM
 "I hearby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitchhike round the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month." That pretty well says it all. A concise explanation of the premise of this travel memoir and pretty well the only reason I was hesitant about reading it. |
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By host on
7/26/2010 9:52 AM
 Every new edition of Books Abroad is inspired by a great read. In the case of our upcoming Reading Northern India, that great read was William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. |
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By host on
7/25/2010 3:42 PM
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| Jeffrey Milstein photographs of Cuba are vibrant in colour and rich in contrast. It's a Cuba that should be familar to anyone who has spent time away from the beach and in the cities and towns that dot this rebel island of the Caribbean. Everything seems close to the road. Never invited in for dinner, never in search of some pastime to while away the hours, Milstein seems to walk the city - Havana, Santiago, Trinidad - capturing the pink-green-blue-yellow-red, faded and bright, the men and women and children who pass or stop for a moment or who wait. |
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By host on
7/19/2010 10:27 PM
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By host on
7/19/2010 1:01 PM
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By host on
7/12/2010 2:58 PM
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 In 1991 after the colapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered an era of economic crisis that came to be known as 'The Special Period in Time of Peace' and eventually simply as 'The Special Period'. Robert Arellano's 2009 Havana Lunar returns readers to this time with the story of a Havana doctor whose concern for the safty of a young prositute leads him towards one very dark night.
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By host on
7/10/2010 3:47 PM
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Thanks to Lynda and Elizabeth (Reading India 2009) who invited me to share a morning at the Swami Narayan Mandir complex in Toronto's north end.
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By host on
7/8/2010 12:30 PM
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 The disappearance of a beautiful young servant and the arrest of a prominent Punjabi lawyer set in motion the first published case of India's most renowned and most private investigator, Vish Puri. 'Chubby,' as he is affectionately called by close family and friends, is pressed into the service of a wealthy Jaipur family who learn much too late that Chubby's only true allegiance is to the truth.
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By host on
7/7/2010 6:08 AM
 In the face of an approaching cyclone, a young fisherman, Tinh, is entrusted with the care of his family's boat. But as great waves reach the shore, Tinh is caught in the confusion and abandons his role for the safety of higher ground. As the storm passes and morning reveals the full extent of the damage, Tinh must struggle to bring his family’s small boat back to the essential resource of the sea. |
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By host on
7/6/2010 9:44 PM
 Curious about the spate of culinary book clubs currently gracing the stage at Nicholas Hoare? Look no further than freelance food writer Stephanie Dickison whose weekly column is a great resource for local foodies - and for those who crave a cuisine rooted in another part of the world. |
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By host on
7/6/2010 9:09 PM
 While traveling with Books Abroad in March 2010, freelance journalist Vawn Himmelsbach published a record of a literary journey that stretched from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. Follow her travels with Books Abroad at GlobalNomad.ca. |
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By host on
7/6/2010 12:59 PM
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From the author of the Dirty Havana Trilogy comes this wonderfully wicked novel that turns the tables on Graham Greene and gives him a taste of the cold war intrigue he helped to define. This Havana is lit by stage lights and street lamps and makes me wonder how anyone could ever fall asleep in a city that comes alive after dark. |
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By host on
7/5/2010 3:09 PM
Just a quick note to point towards the article that accompanied John Goddard's beautiful video on Nek Chand's Rock Garden.
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| Nek Chand Figures, Chandigarh, India |
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By host on
6/30/2010 2:49 PM
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| Nek Chand kept his folk-art fantasyland secret for 16 years. Now it is India's No. 2 attraction after the Taj Mahal but little-known except to Indians. Video by John Goddard, Toronto Star, 2010 |
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By host on
6/29/2010 11:49 AM
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If it's the snow blanketing Montreal that deadens the sounds and words of Kim Echlin's third novel The Disappeared, perhaps in Phnom Penh it's the weight of memory that produces a similar unsettling effect.
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