Stories set in—and revolving around—Vietnam have appeared on BIP many times, like Marcelino Truong’s coming-of-age memoir in translation by David Homel: Such a Lovely Little War (2014; 2015) (his follow-up, Saigon Calling, brought the family to England). Also Robert Olen Butler’s Perfume River (2016) but to say much more
There are three things that I noticed in this rereading of The Handmaid’s Tale. The use of time in the narrative. The importance of what is not said. The matter of world-building and perspective. In all three, readers are wholly engaged. Engaged in the use of time, in the
When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, I was a teenager. In a few years, I would start to keep records about my reading: a log and handwritten (or typed( passages that I favoured along the way. The log in a notebook (usually practical rather than pretty) and the
