Reef tells the story of Triton, a young cook who is indentured to Mr. Salgado at 11 years old. His narrative begins on the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1962, shortly after the failed coup d’état. Mr. Salgado, a marine biologist and member of the Colombo intelligentsia, runs a small government project, seeking to slow […]
Deborah Feldman recounts her childhood growing up in the Hasidic Satmar society in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and her eventual exodus from the community. Her constant self-reflection guides readers to a greater understanding of both the Satmar community and her evolving positionality as she grows up-and-out of Williamsburg. Even though Feldman’s story is likely different from her
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Julian Barnes’ novel The Noise of Time is a fictional narrative, recounting the relationship between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. “If the plan to take a worker from the coal face and turn him into a composer of symphonies did not exactly come to pass, something of the reverse happened. A composer was expected to
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Julian Barnes’ novel The Noise of Time is a fictional narrative, recounting the relationship between Stalin’s Soviet Union and composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The narrative’s organization is reflective of Shostakovich’s personality—precise and anxious. The novel begins with the proverb: “One to hear One to remember And one to drink.” The narrative opens with a brief scene
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