Our Evenings follows Dave Win, a mixed-race boy from a modest family who earns a scholarship to a prestigious public school, where he first crosses paths with Edward, a charming young man from a wealthy, aristocratic background. Their lives become intertwined from adolescence onward. Though Dave later fails to complete his degree at Oxford, he eventually finds fame as an actor, celebrated on stage and screen. His ethnic background subtly shapes his sense of being an outsider, even within Lond...
"The Vegetarian" by Han Kang: Between Flesh and Spirit
As every year, the Swedish Academy pronounced its much-awaited verdict: eagerly anticipated by bookworms across the globe. This time, the jury awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Han Kang, shining a spotlight on a writer not necessarily familiar to the broader public. Like many readers, I rushed to the bookshops, browsed through the available titles by this newly crowned laureate, and faced a major dilemma: which of Kang’s novels should I read first? Unable to decide, I bought three of h...
Published in 1994, Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah is a novel set in East Africa around the end of the 19th century, when European colonial powers were beginning to divide and claim the continent for themselves. The story follows Yusuf, a twelve-year-old boy whose father hands him over to a wealthy merchant named Aziz to pay off a debt. At first, Yusuf works in Aziz’s shop and gardens, but soon he joins the merchant on long trading journeys deep into the African interior. Along the way, Yusuf s...
