I’m interested in Roman Britain, but I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. It’s a wonderful read.
The Medicus of the title, army doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso, and his resolute British friend Tilla are instantly engaging, while the setting is accurately and vividly drawn.
Downie writes a gripping story that tells us a great deal about the Roman Empire, but she wears her learning lightly. She draws irresistible parallels with the modern world without ever straying into anachronism.
This is such a good story that I read it twice just to try to understand how she did it! I’ve already finished Book 8 in the series and am waiting for more.
Welcome to the most remote part of the Roman Empire. Britannia, AD117 – primitive, cold, damp and very muddy.
The Gods are not smiling on army doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso in his new posting in Britannia. He has vast debts, a slave girl who is much more trouble than she is worth and an overbearing hospital administrator to deal with . . . not to mention a serial killer stalking the local streets.
Barmaids’ bodies are being washed up with the tide and no one else seems to care. It’s up to Ruso to summon…
I went back to this classic recently after a gap of many years and loved it even more. This is a serious philosophical novel that is also a grimly funny satire on Stalinist Russia. It was published long after the author's death.
The devil, posing as a stage magician, comes to Moscow, accompanied by various demonic minions, and proves to be more dangerous than any politician. People don’t believe in him, which leaves him free to create havoc, especially among the literary elite.
The mayhem includes such gems as bureaucrats being transformed into empty suits and the staff of the Branch Office of the Theatrical Commission involuntarily finding themselves singing The Song of the Volga Boatmen.
This is a novel that a certain contemporary Russian leader is allegedly afraid of. I can understand why.
'Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Independent
Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. Bulgakov's carnivalesque satire of Soviet life describes how the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow one Spring afternoon. Brimming with magic and incident, it is full of imaginary, historical, terrifying and wonderful characters, from witches, poets and Biblical tyrants to the beautiful, courageous Margarita, who will…
This is the middle book of a series of novels by French archaeologist and historian Fred Vargas. Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is a Parisien Chief of Police, although he comes from the Pyrenees. It is a crime novel, but so much more than that.
I would recommend reading this book first and then going back to the first in the series. I found Adamsberg instantly engaging, as is the whole weirdly original story. It might not be for everyone.
The crimes are bizarre (but never disturbingly explicit), and Vargas, who is female, creates a cast of eccentric and loveable characters who are never clichéd. This is a novel that feels foreign and yet wonderfully familiar. I literally couldn’t put it down.
`People will die,' says the panic-stricken woman outside police headquarters. She has been standing in blazing sunshine for more than an hour, and refuses to speak to anyone besides Commissaire Adamsberg. Her daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grizzly end following a visitation by the riders.
Soon after the young woman's vision a notoriously cruel man disappears, and the local police dismiss the matter as…
When young Finn O’Malley travels from Ireland to work at the potato harvest in 1960s Scotland, he forms a close friendship with Kirsty Galbreath, the farmer’s red-headed granddaughter.
The farm becomes a sanctuary for him, but Finn is damaged by a childhood so traumatic that it will be years before he recovers his memories of what really happened at the brutal Industrial School to which he was committed.
For the sake of his sanity, Finn must try to find out why he was taken into care and what became of the mother he loved and lost. Dealing sensitively with the realities of state sanctioned abuse and its aftermath, Bird of Passage is a powerful story of cruelty, loss and enduring love against all the odds.
