Recent content by Hamishe22

My favorite short story of hers was " Moons of Jupiter".

Alice Munro was one of my favorite writers, a master of short story. I don't have much to say, except that I am sure she'll be read forever,

T Thanks!

Frédéric Mistral Poet and Leader in Provence by Charles Alfred Downer Reading this book was a weird way of familiarizing myself with Frédéric Mistral, as I couldn't manage to find any of his works for myself. This is not a book by Mistral but an academic dissertation on Mistral which deals with...

Man I remember being so disappointed with The Sound of Waves. It was a very expensive copy, and I decided to empty my bank account for it and live austerely until I got paid. Then it was this extremely mid novel. After trying to do a coup and restore a fascist regime, this is the second worst...

Platero and I by Juan Ramon Jimenez A humble and gentle masterpiece. A series of poetic vignettes that describe the author's relationship his donkey and the village he lives in. The book is filled with love for nature and the idyllic, pastoral life in the village, but without whitewashing and...

I'm very conscious of this. I didn't read much non-English and non-Persian poetry before embarking on a journey of reading every Nobel laureate precisely because of this reason. However, the messages of Seifert's poetry is so off putting to me in how simplistic and Instagrami they are that I...

The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert by Jaroslav Seifert, translated by Edward Osers I thought that Winston Churchill was the most puzzling Nobel laureate in Literature, but no, it's Jaroslav Seifert. I just don't see how can anyone read these poems and come to any conclusion other than that they're...

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago is a kind of novel that precisely hits the spot for my literary taste. A classical style dealing with a modern subject matter, with a large rotating cast of very interesting characters whose lives are impacted and intertwined with the history...

Interesting because I personally think 1Q84 is mediocre but Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is one of his best. I guess it still means I will most likely like this one though.

Off topic, but this is the contradiction at heart of the Nobel Peace Prize. Usually people who make peace are the same people who were fighting the war. So if the award remained loyal to its mission statement, about 75% of laureates should have been war criminals and monsters from history. It's...

As part of my quest to read every Nobel laureate, I read two memoirs by Winston Churchill, My Early Life (1930) and the abridged version of The Second World War. Churchill, to me, is one of the most baffling choices for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's not that I regret reading the books. My...

Two books by Saint-John Perse: Anabasis and Seamarks, French poet and diplomat who won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature. I tried my best to enjoy the poetry of Saint-John Perse, and I completely acknowledge that the problem might lie with me or with the fact that I am reading him in...

Never ask an Iranian if they're going broke if you're not ready to listen to a five hour lament about inflation, recession, and currency devaluation ?

Oh it IS his best work (of fiction), I was just objecting the label "world class" for it really. It's just considered a hasty imitation of his favorite writer (Louis Ferdinand Celine) with a bad prose. I have to say, in fairness, that it's possible people like me are biased against Al Ahmad...