Harmony and Discord in Africa by Mark Huleatt-James
This is about a time and a childhood place not far from my own.
Harmony and Discord in Africa, despite its title, is not a political book but rather a slice of ‘home history’ about a boy, his family and their life on a farm in the young British colony of Southern Rhodesia .
Travels in a Dervish Coat by Isambard Wilkinson
Here’s a book to pop your eyes. Cloaked in dust and petals it swirls through bedrooms, bazaars, bombings, palaces, shrines, caves and festivals. The pace is insistent and the tensions increasing.
Our guide is journalist Isambard Wilkinson. He takes us to Pakistan (2006 – 2009) and entices us to follow him from Baluchistan to the Khyber Pass, via a couple of pauses for kidney complications.
Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich (Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
I was at St Andrews University in Scotland, when the accident happened … “the gravest technological catastrophe of the twentieth century.” It was 26 April, 1986.
Reactor No.4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Belarus collapsed.
The Phraser 