Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

The lack of stars is because I am not the person to decide how many this should get. Some books one hates but can be confident that it is a bad book. Not the case here, it isn't that I think it's a bad book. I don't know what it is.

I'm afraid I have let Fionnuala down, agreeing to read this book she highly favours. After 100 tortuous pages I have decided not to finish it. There was a clue. I've been reading a lot over the last months until suddenly I was given The Leopard, and Us and Them arrived in the mail. They have made my reading life so miserable that I have started watching TV shows on my small screen rather than spend an evening with either book. I almost never watch TV! What am I doing?? And I have hundreds of wonderful books on my shelves all saying 'read me'.

Life's too short. The gift of reading might be the thing that we are likely last to lose, but lose it we will. And I have so much I'd like to get through.

In the case of Us & Them, I won't even say it's not you, it's me. To me it had the alienness of My Name is Red. In that case I did blame myself, but that was because I thought the first of Pamut's I read was a masterpiece. Here I have a blank past.

Sorry Fionnula. The good news is that a local library in Adelaide now has a copy of this book as I asked them to purchase it. I hope others will find it more rewarding.… (more)

The lack of stars is because I am not the person to decide how many this should get. Some books one hates but can be confident that it is a bad book. Not the case here, it isn't that I think it's a bad book. I don't know what it is.

I'm afraid I have let Fionnuala down, agreeing to read this book she highly favours. After 100 tortuous pages I have decided not to finish it. There was a clue. I've been reading a lot over the last months until suddenly I was given The Leopard, and Us and Them arrived in the mail. They have made my reading life so miserable that I have started watching TV shows on my small screen rather than spend an evening with either book. I almost never watch TV! What am I doing?? And I have hundreds of wonderful books on my shelves all saying 'read me'.

Life's too short. The gift of reading might be the thing that we are likely last to lose, but lose it we will. And I have so much I'd like to get through.

In the case of Us & Them, I won't even say it's not you, it's me. To me it had the alienness of My Name is Red. In that case I did blame myself, but that was because I thought the first of Pamut's I read was a masterpiece. Here I have a blank past.

Sorry Fionnula. The good news is that a local library in Adelaide now has a copy of this book as I asked them to purchase it. I hope others will find it more rewarding.… (more)

The lack of stars is because I am not the person to decide how many this should get. Some books one hates but can be confident that it is a bad book. Not the case here, it isn't that I think it's a bad book. I don't know what it is.

I'm afraid I have let Fionnuala down, agreeing to read this book she highly favours. After 100 tortuous pages I have decided not to finish it. There was a clue. I've been reading a lot over the last months until suddenly I was given The Leopard, and Us and Them arrived in the mail. They have made my reading life so miserable that I have started watching TV shows on my small screen rather than spend an evening with either book. I almost never watch TV! What am I doing?? And I have hundreds of wonderful books on my shelves all saying 'read me'.

Life's too short. The gift of reading might be the thing that we are likely last to lose, but lose it we will. And I have so much I'd like to get through.

In the case of Us & Them, I won't even say it's not you, it's me. To me it had the alienness of My Name is Red. In that case I did blame myself, but that was because I thought the first of Pamut's I read was a masterpiece. Here I have a blank past.

Sorry Fionnula. The good news is that a local library in Adelaide now has a copy of this book as I asked them to purchase it. I hope others will find it more rewarding.… (more)

Nine travelers, of different faiths, backgrounds, and races, are all changed forever on one fateful day, by their encounter with a single leather saddlebag.

The story is told from the viewpoint of each of the nine travelers in turn, starting with a Bedouin thief who steals the saddlebag from a man he takes to be a rich merchant. This act seems to set the entire story in motion, but as we learn the stories of the other travelers, it become less clear where the story truly began. Did it begin with the chieftan who alienated the Bedouin? The bride who seemed to foresee some of what was to occur? The moneychanger who manipulated the timing of the caravan?

What happens to the nine travelers on the route from Mecca to Median is both brutal and beautiful, full of small mercies and unforgiving truths. Each character is drawn with such grace, each story illuminating another facet of the whole. What, exactly, is written in the parchments in the saddlebag, however, remains a mystery. Much like life, and faith, itself.… (more)