Apr 2018 Garlic Ballads
Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan Book Group 1 – April The book club read Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan’s Garlic Ballads in April. This novel is set in rural China and is the story of the people living in Paradise County. They are peasants who mostly make their living growing garlic, and then there are the […]
Mar 2018 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy Book Group 1 – March 2018 Roy’s book is about the vulnerable on the margins of society, outcasts who eventually come together and make a community in a Delhi graveyard. Two of the main characters are Anjum, a flamboyant transsexual or hijra, who is searching for her place […]
Feb 2018 The Leavers
The Leavers by Lisa Ko Book Group 2 Loosely based on a true story of a woman caught up in an immigration nightmare back in 2007, the book provided great discussion on immigration, legal and illegal, in the many different countries we have all lived. In addition, our feelings about Polly’s motherhood and her on-and-off […]
Feb 2018 The Girl with Seven Names
The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Lee Hyeonseo Book Group 1 Hyeonseo Lee’s book is a story of a North Korean defector. She was almost an accidental defector! Lived in the North Korean town of Hyesan, near the border with China, often wondered why there were so many more lights on […]
Jan 2018 Three Sisters
Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu, Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin Book Group 1 – January 2018 Set in a rural village and town in China as the Cultural Revolution was coming to an end in 1971/2 and 10 years later, Three Sisters is about Yumi, the eldest, Yuxiu, the third, and Yuyang, the […]
Jan 2018 – The Hotel on the Roof of the World
The Hotel on the Roof of the World; Five Years in Tibet By Alec Le Sueur Alec Le Sueur depicts his time in Tibet from 1988 till 1993 in this travelogue. He was sent to Lhasa as a sales manager for the Holiday Inn, which was in those days the only hotel of international standing […]
Nov 2017 The Feast of Roses
The Feast of Roses (Taj Mahal Trilogy #2), by Indu Sundaresan Most of the book group members had read the book even though some of us were not able to attend the meeting. They really enjoyed the book and rated it 8 out of 10. In our previous reading years – I think two years […]
Oct 2017 – ‘The Sympathizer’
‘The Sympathizer’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Book Group 1 October 27th 2017 The Sympathizer is a Pulitzer prizewinning novel about the Vietnam War, written by Vietnamese American author, Viet Thanh Nguyen. It tells the story of an unnamed Vietcong spy deeply embedded undercover as a senior personal aide to an influential South Vietnamese general. He […]
Sep 2017 – The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul
The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez Book Group 2 – September 2017 Sunny and her partner, Tommy, are American and Tommy works away from Kabuldoing secret mercenary work. Sunny is on her own whilst Tommy is away and so decides to take on running the coffee shop as a project to keep […]
Aug 2017 – Rooftops of Tehran
Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji In a middle class neighbourhood of Tehran, 17 year old Pasha spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, joking and talking about the future. Even as Pasha asks burning questions about life he also wrestles with a crushing secret. He has fallen in […]