The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
From the Veranda of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum at the Magistracy The Ninth Day of the Ninth Month Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens,...
Flowers for Algernon
"I have a right to know everything that pertains to the experiment, and that includes my future." "No reason why you shouldn't know." He paused and lit an already lit cigarette. "You understand, of course, that from the beginning we had the highest hopes of...
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
‘This is about’ – the Irishman balances his hat on his thigh – ‘what we’d call, at home, a “skeleton in the cupboard”.’ ‘On Walcheren we say, “a body in the vegetable patch”.’ ‘Monster turnips, then, on Walcheren. May I speak in English?’ ‘Do so. If I need your help,...
The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company
For over a century the Portuguese had policed the maritime trade of the Arabian sea and, although their power might be declining further east, they still had formidable influence at the Moghul court and at every port between Goa and their Persian base at Hormuz....
To A Mountain In Tibet
I am travelling with this mystique myself, I know. It has grown out of childhood, and adolescent reading. This looking-glass Tibet is a realm of ancient learning lost to the rest of the world, rules by a lineage of monks who are reincarnations of divinity. Recessed...