Skip to content

The Library Is Open

A blog about books and writing, through rainbow-tinted glasses

  • About
  • Reviews
  • Certified gay
  • Gay stuff

Tag: Historical

Review: The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.

A tremendously rewarding novel about love in the cruellest of places.

Black writers, Fiction, Historical, LGBTIQ, Novel, queer, US

Review: The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Light Years is the perfect novel for a society sleep-walking towards disaster.

1930s, Classics, England, Fiction, Historical, World War II

Review: The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

An ambitious novel about war and memory.

1930s, Ethiopia, Fiction, Historical, Italy, Novel, War

Review: The Adventures Of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre)

Lesbians! Cowboys! Argentina!

Argentina, Contemporary, Fiction, Historical, Indigenous Americans, LGBTIQ, Man Booker International, Novel, queer, Translation

Review: A Treacherous Country by K. M. Kruimink

A strange and misty novel set in colonial Van Diemen’s Land.

Australian, Fiction, Historical, Novel, Tasmania

Review: Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe

Stone Sky Gold Mountain offers a rearranging of Australian history, reminding us other settlers were also here in the early days.

Australian, China, Contemporary, Fiction, Historical

Review: Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A story of love and war in Nigeria in the 1960s, Half Of A Yellow Sun reaches outwards through history.

Classics, Fiction, Historical, Nigeria, Novel

Review: Damascus by Christos Tsolkias

Caravaggio perfected painting people at the exact moment when dark gives way to light. In Damascus, Tsolkias achieves the same effect in words.

Australian, Fiction, Historical, Novel

Instagram

“It's just the lottery of circumstance, a game she lost before she was even born. Lay down your arms, woman: this isn't a battle, it's a rout. And yet. And yet.”
Chinese writer Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his “hallucinatory realism”. That’s fully on display in this book about garlic farmers in 1980s China.
My fourth read from the #2021stellaprize shortlist is Evie Wyld’s forensic examination of misogyny in all its forms.
Blog at WordPress.com.