David Mehegan
An eclectic round-up of the favorite books of the year from our critics.
Eri Hotta’s biography of Shinichi Suzuki is about optimism, gentleness, doggedness, belief in children, humanity, and the affirmative properties of art in the face of violence and ignorance.
The Tamil version of Pyre, under the title, Pukkuli, was dedicated to a young man murdered in his community for making an inter-caste marriage.
Hot Maroc is more of a three-ring circus than a drama, with a high-wire act at one end, tigers and elephants at the other, and scurrying clowns in the middle.
Above and beyond Mario Vargas Llosa’s political outlook, his latest novel proves that he remains at heart a master storyteller.
Like Blinky in Pac-Man, the narrator of this provocative but often frustrating and diffuse book gobbles up everything.
Refugee: A Memoir was not written to entertain but to outrage and activate.
Oh yes, they thought that to treat human beings like livestock was backward and doomed and obsolete and unscientific and fatally inefficient, but if any of them thought it was indefensibly cruel and morally intolerable, they show no awareness by the evidence of this book.
Book Review: Two Powerful Books from Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa — A Liberal Citizen of the World
Engagingly written by a limpid stylist, The Call of the Tribe marshals a corps of sparkling intellectuals who have in common first-hand experience of dictatorship, a commitment to individual freedom, a belief in reasonably regulated free-market economies, and a rejection of the political zealotry of religion or the doctrinaire left and right.
Read More about Book Review: Two Powerful Books from Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa — A Liberal Citizen of the World