Winner: Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2010 and the Dolman Travel Prize 2010. Jamaica used to be the source of much of Britain’s wealth: it was a tropical paradise for the planters and a Babylonian exile for the slaves cultivating the sugar. Since independence in 1962, the life of the West Indian island has …
When Graham Greene died in 1991, at the age of 86, his reputation as a “Catholic” writer was assured. His books reflected an awareness of sin and confronted political and religious themes with a sombre eye. From 1936 to 1987, the British Catholic journal The Tablet provided Greene with a forum for his works-in-progress and …
Articles of Faith: Graham Greene’s Contributions to The Tablet Read More »
In 2014, four years after the earthquake, Ian Thomson returned to Haiti. Reissue of the classic 1992 book, with a new post-earthquake foreword by the author. From the Foreword On 12 January 2010, René Préval was Haitian president when the country was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake. Downtown Port-au-Prince had been teeming as usual that …
Bonjour Blanc: A Journey Through Haiti (Reissue) Read More »
Winner: Royal Society of Literature W.H.Heinemann Prize 2002. On 11 April 1987 the Italian writer Primo Levi fell to his death in the house in Turin where he was born. More than forty years after his rescue from a Nazi concentration camp, it now seemed that Levi had committed suicide. Levi’s account of Auschwitz, If …
Translation by Ian Thomson of three fictionalized essays by the Sicilian crime writer Leonardo Sciascia. From the introduction “Translation is not always satisfactory; Cervantes claimed it was simply the other side of a tapestry, a frayed and ragged version of the original. I hope I have not rendered Leonardo Sciascia that disservice: Death of …
