EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

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Well, I take your word for it. But still, what a hole it is, Gaborone. Bunch of tarts sitting in the dust outside selling woolly hats. Sit by the pool, play the fruit machines, bugger all else to do." He paused, the tirade halted by a scruple The development of this mystery and its denouement are not the most effective pieces of the novel. The frustration and futility of trying to fi scene. When the Jidda earthquake comes -- and it will come -- all-seeing Allah will observe that the buildings are held together with glue; and he will peel the city apart like an onion.'' Like everything else in these accomplished novels, the question makes one think. Some readers may find themselves re-examining their own ideas about the artist's right or obligation to render politically uncomfortable truths. with a charitable trust. ''Reared in the service of the great god Self-Control,'' Ralph and Anna have schooled their children in the virtues of self-sacrifice and built their family life around the comforting notion

I must like it, she thought. I shall try to like it. When everyone is so negative about a place you begin to suspect it must have some virtues after all. "No alcohol!" people say, as if you'd die without it. "And women aren't allowed to drive? That's terrible." There are lots of things more terrible, she thought, and even I have seen some of them. She dozed. It is Wolf Hall’s skilful vacillation between past and present, interior and external narration, public and private, that allows Thomas Cromwell’s beginnings to become more than mere affirmations of what the man will become. Rather, they allow the contemporary reader to challenge and question history’s judgement of the man. In other words, Wolf Hall allows us to empathise; to defer our judgement.

The Sydney Morning Herald

The front door of their gloomy apartment has been walled shut to keep a former female occupant from accidentally encountering a male neighbor; newspapers carry cautionary tales of adulterous wives stoned to death; Frances can't Oh no," she said. "I'd have to go around with a headscarf on all day. I couldn't put up with that."

allowed to drive? That's terrible." There are lots of things more terrible, she thought, and even I have seen some of them. She dozed. unsought, unexpected, undeserved -- and cruel enough to dwarf the petty ignorance and coarseness of the expatriate communities. She has always existed on the margins: of her family, of her university group, of the expatriate communities in the Middle East and Africa, of literary London. The experience of being not quite at home, even when at home, has contributed to her life not only as a writer but as a reader. It is evident from her conversation, the bright life with which she invests her remarks about books and writers, that reading holds the same sort of status for her as writing. "If you grew up, as I did, a northerner, a Catholic, from an Irish family, you soon began to realise that there was this thing called 'Englishness', but it wasn't necessarily what you possessed. It was located somewhere else. It had different vowels. One of the things that engaged me right away about Kidnapped was that it wasn't written in 'English' English. I was not a Scot, but I could hear the language of Davie and Alan better than I could hear the dialect, the rhythms, of southern England."now, dribbling a little onto their airline blankets. There was a sound of subdued laughter; brief-cases intruded into the aisles. The steward relented. He leaned over her seat. "Listen, if anything goes wrong, if by some mischance sensation of movement, no intimation that they were in flight. She closed her eyes. Sleep now, she coaxed herself. Tomorrow I will have people to meet and there will be a good deal to do. How pleased I will be, to do it; and to be there, Andrew was silent. He passed them, one by one. Why, really, should she share his vision of their future? She had come to Africa at her own behest, a single woman, one of the few recruited for her line of work. She had lived alone before they met; for three nights in succession, he had sat by himself, seemingly disconsolate, on a corner stool in the bar of an expatriate club, not even looking her way, but concentrating hard; until she had asked him to go home with her. She had fed her dog, and then cooked eggs for them, and asked him what he wanted out of life. Later, in the sagging double bed with which her government bungalow was furnished, he had lain awake while she slept, wishing furiously for her to act and understand; and although it had taken a little time to work, within a matter of weeks she had turned to him and said, "We could get married if that's what you want."