‘The Tainted’ by Cauvery Madhavan – book review

‘The Tainted’ by Cauvery Madhavan – book review

The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan, HopeRoad Publishing, £9.99 p/b, 336pp My review in The Irish Examiner, 19 September, 2020 WHERE is ‘home’? Cauvery Madhavan’s third novel transports us to India, 1920, and life for British soldiers based in the Nandagiri hillside...
Dreams of the Everyday Housewife

Dreams of the Everyday Housewife

Finished the brilliant Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell (publ.1959), a wry story about a suburban and dutiful American middle-class wife, Mrs India Bridge, before and after WWII, who is suffering from a sort of ‘Post-Traumatic Living Disorder’. Glen Campbell’s 1960s’...
The Little Boy and The Fat Man

The Little Boy and The Fat Man

Today is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima, followed a few days later by the bombing of Nagasaki. This is a feature I wrote about the two bombings which was first published in 2004. Charles Sweeney was born in...
‘The Tainted’ by Cauvery Madhavan – book review

Cauvery Madhavan In Person

My ‘Scribes’ interview for this year’s virtual Féile an Phobail with author Cauvery Madhavan is now available on YouTube here. Cauvery has written three novels – Paddy Indian, The Uncoupling and her latest The Tainted, released in May 2020, has received rave reviews....
Colin Broderick In Person

Colin Broderick In Person

As part of Féile an Phobail’s virtual Scribes at the Rock I interviewed the New Jersey-based writer Colin Broderick, a former native of Tyrone, about his two extraordinary memoirs, That’s That and Orangutan, which deal with his troubled childhood,...
The Dungeons of Tazmamart

The Dungeons of Tazmamart

My review of Moroccan Aziz BineBine’s biography about his eighteen years of torture in the dungeons of Tazmamart was published in last Saturday’s Irish Examiner. Tazmamart was translated from the French by Lulu Norman and is published by Haus – pp....