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magazine: Reviews

Sanjena Sathian
Gold Diggers

As a staunch supporter of books reflecting the diversity of South Asian voices and experiences, I love that Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian is a story grounded in real life struggles bolstered by ancient magic and spirituality, history, and a nerve-jangling heist.

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Abdulrazak Gurnah
Theft

I was curious to read Abdulrazak Gurnah’s latest novel – his first publication since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Theft follows Karim, Fauzia, and Badar, who grow up between Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, become friends, and fall in love.

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Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
When We Were Birds

For several months, I kept circling around the same book in my local bookshop. Some of the keywords on the back cover of Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel piqued my interest: Trinidad, Rastafari, cemetery, gravedigger, magical love story, family legend. 

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Kiran Desai
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

I picked up up Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard at the beginning of this year – I’ll let you work out which events prompted me to reach for this book about a guy who garners a lot of adoring followers that sincerely believe he has the answers to everything – because as we know, books are a way of contextualizing the world.

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Fiona Williams
The House of Broken Bricks

The House of Broken Bricks is a sad and beautiful story about the cracks in the lives of the Hembrys, a mixed-race family in rural Somerset. It’s a family of four in a difficult situation and it seems like it’s going to break them. But maybe there is still a chance that they can somehow find their way back to each other?

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Olufunke Grace Bankole
The Edge of Water

Why are there connections between the well-being of the people in New Orleans and Ibadan? How is the destructive hurricane in one place connected to the drying up river in the other? In Olufunke Grace Bankole’s sad and beautiful debut novel The Edge of Water, this is due to a disregarded prophecy.

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Anita Desai
Rosarita

Rosarita, Desai’s newest novel, is the story of Bonita, a young Indian woman from New Delhi who has come to San Miguel, Mexico for Spanish immersion courses. One day in the Jardín, she is confronted by the woman Vicky who becomes The Stranger and later, The Trickster. The Stranger claims to have known Bonita’s mother, Sunita. Except, The Stranger calls her Rosarita. Rosarita, insists The Stranger, was once a great artist who had travelled from India to learn from the great painters of Mexico.

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