From some of the finest historical fiction to poignant stories of friendships, familial bonds, love and loss, here are some of the latest additions to our bookshelves!
The one silver lining of the lockdown is that it has given us ample hours to catch up with our reading. From some of the finest historical fiction to poignant stories of friendships, familial bonds, love and loss, here are some of the latest additions to our bookshelves!
1. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
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'A defiantly warm and funny novel, by somebody who has earned the right to argue that love and optimism can survive whatever history might throw at us' - Daily Telegraph
September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe.
Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life – and the fate of his country – forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile.
When opportunity to seek refuge arises, they board a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to Chile, the promised 'long petal of sea and wine and snow'. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world.
A masterful work of historical fiction that soars from the Spanish Civil War to the rise and fall of Pinochet, A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.
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"Gunesekera artfully renders the unequal relationship between the two boys, and the fractures within their families" – New York Times
1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.
