Reviews Articles
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Baking Cakes in Kigali
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin. Atlantic Books (Grove Atlantic Ltd). ISBN 978 1 84354 7471. Paperback: £7.99 ‘Like the Ladies Detective Agency but in Rwanda’, screams the cover of this edition. And the back. The fear with this book is that it only made the shelves because the… -
Holding it together
We are all made of glue by Marina Lewycka. Fig Tree (Penguin Group). ISBN 978 1 905 49022 6. Hardback: £18.99 Georgie Sinclair, the heroine of this delightful novel, edits the trade magazine Adhesives in the Modern World. About as exciting as a history of tractors in Ukrainian, you might…
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Three thousand years from Galilee to the world
A History of Christianity: the first three thousand years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Allan Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books. ISBN: 978 0 713 99869 6. £35 The size alone is impressive. Comprising 1,161 pages including almost sixty pages of index, seventy-seven pages of notes and fourteen pages of suggested further…
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The fruits of conversation
Rooted in Christianity, Open to New Light – Quaker spiritual diversity by Timothy Ashworth and Alex Wildwood, Pronoun Press in partnership with Woodbrooke. ISBN 978 0 955 6183 3 8. £9. This book comes at the same time as the deadline of the Friends Quarterly essay competition on the future…
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Not all of one mind
Occupied Minds: A journey through the Israeli psyche by Arthur Neslen, Pluto Press. ISBN 0 7453 2365 0. £16.99. Who are the Israelis? We may think we know – proud, motivated Jews defending their right to a homeland. But is it true? Some of the people Arthur Neslen spoke to…
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An invented people?
The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, translated by Yael Lotan, Verso. 2009. ISBN: 978 1 84467 422 0. £18.99. Spanish Jews are largely descended from converted Berber tribes from North Africa; Yemenite Jews are descendents of an Arabian tribe; many Jews from Eastern Europe come from Turkic…
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My Name is Asher Lev
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. Penguin. ISBN 978 014119 056 3. £9.99. Asher Lev is a young man who makes waves in his community. It is a strict orthodox one in 1950s New York, burdened with the rescue of Jews in hostile lands. Asher’s father works for…
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Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 014043 427 9. £8.99. Rereading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda at the same time as My Name is Asher Lev, it occurred to me that the story of the latter is actually subsumed into a single chapter of the former. When Daniel…
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A journey of transformation
God Sleeps in Rwanda: a journey of transformation by Joseph Sebarenzi with Laura Ann Mullane. Atria Books. ISBN: 978 141657 573 3. £18.99. The European subjection and colonisation of Africa has left a brutal legacy. From the indefensible abuses of enslavement and apartheid to the wanton plundering of Africa’s rich…
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Two views on faith
The case for God: what religion really means by Karen Armstrong. The Bodley Head. ISBN: 978 1 847 92034 8. £20. Reason, Faith and Revolution: reflections on the God debate by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press. ISBN: 978 030 015179 4. £18.99. As sparks continue to fly between allies and…
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