The Oxford Book of English Verse
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Here is a treasure-house of over seven centuries of English poetry, chosen and introduced by...
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra
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Dr. Aphra teams up with Darth Vader himself in this audiobook original - an expanded adaptation of...
Driving in China
Education and Utilities
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Foreigners can not just transfer their local drivers license in China. Study for the official exam...
ClareR (5864 KP) rated The Country of Others in Books
Sep 19, 2021
Mathilde falls in love with, and marries, Amine Belhaj, a Moroccan stationed in Alsace. After the war, she sails to Morocco to live with Amine on his family farm. Life is so different to that in France, and Mathilde struggles to adapt. The French there shun her because of her husband, and Moroccans are suspicious of her because she’s French.
It’s a time of great upheaval in the 1950’s, as the Moroccans fight for independence from France, and life becomes increasingly dangerous for the Belhaj’s.
It’s a challenging life for Mathilde: she has to work hard, and Amine has a very fixed idea of a wife’s role. When she doesn’t stick to his rules, voices her opinions or disagrees, Amine beats her - he’s a violent man, scarred by the things that he saw and experienced in the war.
Mathilde does manage to insist that their daughter, Aicha, goes to a good French speaking school, and Aicha proves to be a good, diligent student - but the other girls at school are poisoned by their parents views: they’re very unkind and bully her.
There is a real feel for the heat and dust of Morocco. The contrasting cultures and religions of Christianity and Islam are shown, as well as the roles of women and how they are restricted in the light of their religions and it’s traditions. It looks at what it is to be a foreigner in a strange land; belonging, both in a country and a family; and the Moroccan struggle for independence from France.
This is going to be a trilogy, and I’m already fully invested in it - I can’t wait for the next book. Sam Taylor’s translation is perfect, and I hope that they’ll be translating the subsequent books as well.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for helping me (yet again!) with my NetGalley reading, and to Faber for my ebook copy through NetGalley.
In between chapters, the narrator simultaneously includes his own first-person account of his visit to Chernobyl and the neighbouring ghost town of Pripyat, some 32 years after the fallout which killed, injured and displaced so many people in the Ukraine.
Included in the text are photographs of the sarcophagus, the ghost town of Pripyat and documentation from the official enquiry (in translation from the original Cyrillic text). One of the most enthralling chapters is a very stomach-churning, matter-of-fact detail of what actually happens to a human body when affected by radiation poisoning. This chapter is seriously not for the faint-hearted!!
Leatherbarrow has done an absolutely fantastic job here, over 5 years of research to build an account of something I have heard of all my life but no writing has quite enthralled me like this book did. The juxtaposition of the historical and the modern help to transform this text from the dryly historical account that it could have been into a thoroughly readable and dare I say unputdownable account of one the the worlds biggest nuclear disasters.
Patricia Johanson and the Re-Invention of Public Environmental Art, 1958-2010
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Impeccably researched and richly detailed, this book addresses the issue of translation between...
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse and David Horrocks
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A modernist work of profound wisdom that continues to enthral readers with its subtle blend of...
Kingdoms Mobile
Games and Entertainment
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Your world is in chaos! Your once great kingdom now fights for its life against a scourge of mighty...
Mysteries of Paris
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The first new translation in over a century of the the brilliant epic novel that inspired Les...