The Quiet Rebellion: On Hope, Despair, and How the 21st-Century Novel Offers a Way Out

Looking for your next powerful read? Discover how Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky, Tahmima Anam’s Uprising, and Carolina Pihelgas’s The Cut Line offer hope in a world defined by chaos and instability. Continue reading The Quiet Rebellion: On Hope, Despair, and How the 21st-Century Novel Offers a Way Out

Upcoming Novels, Snowstorms & the Infinite Oddity of the Human Condition

This morning, I sat down at my desk, ready to write about the upcoming novels I’m excited for– gifts, if you will, to help me get through the long, lingering months of February and March. Continue reading Upcoming Novels, Snowstorms & the Infinite Oddity of the Human Condition

“Ravens, Cream, solitude, sublimity”: Virginia Woolf on Literature & Inner Peace

How many of us, “congenial spirits” are left out there, as Woolf writes in The Voyage Out (1915), “feel[ing] intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.” Continue reading “Ravens, Cream, solitude, sublimity”: Virginia Woolf on Literature & Inner Peace

In Search of Silence & a Life Worth Living: Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence

‘Shifting the Silence’ is raw and elusive, like the very reflection you’re reading here, but it will urge you to confront the incomprehensible. Continue reading In Search of Silence & a Life Worth Living: Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence

Finding Beauty ‘In Our Times of Greatest Love and Greatest Fear’: The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Lefteri approaches her characters’ vulnerability in such a gentle, graceful way that the novel feels heart-warming and hopeful despite the horrifying reality millions of people worldwide face today. Continue reading Finding Beauty ‘In Our Times of Greatest Love and Greatest Fear’: The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri