Book of the Month - The Lowland - May 2014

The Book

This is a family saga focusing on two brothers - Subhash and Udayan - who take two very different paths in life. While Udayan becomes embroiled with communist politics and terrorism, his older brother, Subhash, moves to America to study. After Udayan's untimely death, the novel explores the consequences for the family and in particular for Udayan's widow Gauri, who agrees to marry Subhash.  

"The Lowland" was short listed for the Booker Prize and the Woman's Prize for Fiction and long listed for the National Book Award for Fiction.

The Author

Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author. She is the author of "The Namesake" and "The Interpreter of Maladies" and won the Pulitzer Prize  for Fiction in 2000. Born in London, Lahiri moved to America with her parents when she was 2 and was brought up in Rhode Island. Her parents were originally from West Bengal, India. She now lives in Italy with her husband, a journalist for TIME America and two children.

Lahiri's writing is autobiographical and draws upon her own experiences and those of other Indian Bengali immigrants. Her stories examine the immigrant experience.

More Information

Jhumpa Lahiri's website is: http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/jhumpalahiri/

Book of the Month - Pigeon English - June 2012

The Book
A debut novel, this is the story of a young boy, Harrison Opoku who has recently moved from Ghana to live in an English inner-city housing estate. Told from Harrison's perspective, it is a tale of innocence and experience, hope and reality, as he absorbs the elements of his new life and learns the tricks of inner-city survival.

The book was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2011 (won by Julian Barnes' "The Sense of an Ending" which we read last month).

It will therefore be interesting to put ourselves in the judges shoes (anyone for being Stella Rimington please stand up please!) and compare the books against each other. We should also ask ourselves do award-winning or nominated books really indicate excellent books and will this prove as contraversial a story as some of the other books we've discussed? I am sure there will be much to chew over.....

The Author
Stephen Kelman was born in Luton in 1976. After finishing his degree he had a varied career working as a warehouse operative, a careworker, and in marketing and local government administration - providing much material for writing! He decided to focus on writing seriously in 2005, and has since completed several screenplays.

More Details
Find out about the book at http://www.pigeonenglish.co.uk/ and about the Man Booker Prize.

Book of the Month - July 2011 - The Dark Room

The Book

This debut novel, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2001 and winner of a Betty Trask Award, explores the legacy of Nazi guilt and the modern German psyche. It is told from the perspective of three ordinary Germans between the 1920s and 1990s.

The stories comprise those of Helmut - a young photographer in Berlin in the 1930s; Lore - a 12-year old girl guiding her family across Germany after her Nazi parents are seized by the Allies; and Micha - a young teacher obsessed by her grandfathers role in the war and struggling with the past.

Reviewers have praised it as a novel that provokes discussion about how we ourselves would respond to atrocious events and their legacy. It has been judged as exploring emotional and psychological issues with rare insight and humanity.

The Author

Rachel Seiffert was born in 1971 to a German mother and Australian father and grew up mostly in Glasgow and Oxford. She has lived in Berlin. She has also worked in film and community education and currently writes full-time for a living. In 2003, Seiffert was named by Granta magazine as one of 'Best of British Young Novelists'. Since publishing the book, Seiffert has gone on to publish a book of short stories, 'Field Studies' (2004) and 'Afterwards' (2007).

More Information

For more information see:

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03A30L020012634903