Category Books about War
War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944 by Iris Origo
After reading Iris Origo’s diary A Chill in the Air a couple weeks ago, I was glad to get my hands on War in Val d’Orcia, the most popular of Iris’s works. Iris stopped writing A Chill in the Air on 23 July 1940, a few days after Mussolini declared war against the Allies. The […]
A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939–1940 by Iris Origo
I was thrilled when A Chill in the Air slipped through my mailbox on Monday. Before 2017, I avoided wartime memoirs like the plague. I’ve been an avid reader of war fiction, but I always thought reading factual accounts of wars would be more than I could handle. Then I spent the last year working […]
Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy
Akil Kumarasamy’s debut novel Half Gods is presented as a collection of interwoven short stories that explores the immigrant experience. Those who have been following my blog for a while might know that I’m from Sri Lanka, where a 26-year civil war was fought between the Sinhalese, Sri Lanka’s ethnic majority and the Tamil minority. […]
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Longlisted for Women’s Prize for Fiction A Boy in Winter is set during WWII in a newly occupied small town in Ukraine. SS armies are rounding up Jews when Yankel, a young Jewish boy decides to make a run for it with Momik, his baby brother. Yankel has no clue of the trials that lie […]
Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper
Today is the final day of Persephone Readathon, so I thought I would pick a slim book which I’ll be able to read in a day. The book I chose is Operation Heartbreak which only has 167 pages, and right off the bat before I get into the story I must urge you not to […]
William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton
William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton is the first book Persephone Books published. So to kick off the Persephone Readathon, I decided I’d read it. It is the story of William Tully, a “mild-mannered, pale-faced, and under-sized” young clerk. He comes to a small fortune when his mother passes away, but having spent his […]
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer was a fascinating read. Having never read literature related to Vietnam War before, this book written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese American helped me put things into perspective. I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not […]
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu’s aunty said this in a low voice as they walked on the path. “But he is a good man,” she added. “And as long as you work […]
