Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light"

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light" - 2023

"The grand master of gripping fiction is back. International No.1 bestseller Ken Follett returns to Kingsbridge with an epic tale of revolution and a cast of unforgettable characters."

Yes, he is a grand master indeed. After having written four books about Kingsbridge, their cathedral and the inhabitants, rich and poor from 997 until the 16th century, here is the follow-up for the Industrial Revolution.

With the story of  Kingsbridge, we also learn the story of England and the United Kingdom. Anytime we read about history and how people lived, we must be thankful to live today. Even though we also have political problems, we as "the little people" have a lot more rights than people ever had. And we owe this to people like those described here.

I hope the story of Kingsbridge will continue into modern times. Then we could just go on with the century trilogy.

In any case, this is THE series for lovers of historical fiction.

I missed a list of all the characters before and during the book. And, like I said before, I would have enjoyed a timeline of what happened at the time. Yes, I have the internet and plenty of other books where I can look this up but I find having it in the actual book I'm reading is actually very helpful.

From the back cover:

"Revolution is in the air

1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert.

Kingsbridge is on the edge

Unprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart.

Tyranny is on the horizon

Now, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people - including spinner Sal Clitheroe, weaver David Shoveller and Kit, Sal’s inventive and headstrong son - will come to define the struggle of a generation as they seek enlightenment and fight for a future free from oppression. . .

Taking the reader straight into the heart of history with the fifth novel in the ground-breaking Kingsbridge series, The Armour of Light is master storyteller Ken Follett’s most ambitious novel to date."

Dorling Kindersley "Brussels"

Dorling Kindersley (Hewetson, Zöe) "Brussels. Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp" - 2000
A Dorling Kindersley Travel Guide

One of the DK Travel Guides I have used frequently. Brussels is my favourite city. I have lived there. I have met my husband there. We have been going more than once every year since we moved away and now our youngest son lives there, right in the area where my husband and I met.

I love the Eyewitness Guides and also their little sister, The Travel Guides. Even if you are not able to visit a city (or a country), you can see exactly what it looks like and get a lot of information about the town, the people, the buildings, the parks, the museums, the food, just about everything you would like to know about a certain place.

The guide is divided into the areas of the city: the Lower Town, the Upper Town, Greater Brussels, Beyond Brussels, it gives you all the information a traveller needs: Where to stay, restaurants, cafés and bars, Shopping in Brussels, there is a survival guide with practical and travel information, everything you need to know.

Brussels is such a beautiful city with so many historic places, it's hard to know where to begin. A must is definitely the Grand Place with all its picturesque guild houses. You certainly can't miss this. It's beautiful to sit in one of the restaurants and observe the bustling life around you. But we usually just have a coffee there and go for dinner in one of the cheaper places just off the market or in another quarter, the food is so much better, as well.

In every even year, there is a flower carpet on the Grand Place, always around Assumption Day (of Mary, 15 August), a national holiday in Belgium.

One place we visit almost every time is the Cinquantenaire which is close by my old living place. There's a beautiful parc and a palace built by Leopold II on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary (cinquantenaire) of Belgium. Him being German, he based the memorial arcade on the Brandenburg Gate but it also looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Then there's the Quartier Royal with its Royal Palace and the Parc de Bruxelles, one of the most beautiful parcs you can imagine. And, of course, lots of wonderful museums for anyone interested in art and history. The palace is open to the public in the summer. Definitely worth another visit.

And there are places you should visit, if you happen to be in Brussels for longer or at a certain time. First of all, the symbol of Brussels, the Atomium, originally constructed as the centrepiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). Definitely worth it, especially since its renovation about two decades ago. Six of the spheres are accessible to the public and they show permanent as well as temporary exhibitions on the 50s, the Expo, the construction as well as modern art or anything of current interest.

Then there are the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken which are open to the public once a year for two weeks in April/May.

You can also do tours around Brussels to admire the Art Nouveau houses, doors, windows, entrances (you can get a cheap map at the info centre at the Grand Place). There is also such a map for all the comic related street art. Tintin and his friends are all over the place. And if you arrive at the Gare Central (central station) and leave the place, don't forget to look up when you pass under the passage of the Putterie.

Brussels also has beautiful metro stations, a ride on the metro is always interesting.

There is so much more to see that it is impossible to write in just one post. You will have to go and see for yourself why I love this town so much.

Of course, all the other cities mentioned in the title and the book are also very much worth visiting.

Book description:

"Highlights Lower Town, Upper Town, Greater Brussels, as well as sited beyond the city.

Recognized the world over by frequent flyers and armchair travelers alike, Eyewitness Travel Guides are the most colorful and comprehensive guides on the market. With beautiful commissioned photographs and spectacular 3-D aerial views revealing the charm of each destination, these amazing travel guides show what others only tell.

'DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp' is your indispensable guide to this beautiful part of the world. The fully updated guide includes unique cutaways, floor plans and reconstructions of the must-see sights, plus street-by-street maps. The also is packed with photographs and illustrations leading you straight to the best attractions these cities offer.

With insider tips and essential local information, this uniquely visual DK Eyewitness Travel guide highlights everything you'll need to know to make your vacation special, from local festivals and markets to day trips around the countryside. Detailed listings will guide you to the best hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops for all budgets, while practical information will help you to get around by train, bus, or car.

'DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp' will help you effortlessly explore every corner of Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp."

Brontë, Charlotte "The Professor"

Brontë, Charlotte "The Professor" - 1857

This novel has been on my wishlist for quite a while. It was recommended to me by another blogger who, like me, has also lived in Brussels and from her I learned that they have a Brontë society there now. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about that when I lived there but they might have started this after my time.

Anyway, if you have not read anything by Charlotte Brontë, you definitely must have heard of Jane Eyre, her most popular book, probably the most popular one of all the books by any of the Brontë sisters.

I have yet to find a book by any of them that I don't like at all, they are all fascinating and gripping. Just as this one. I must admit, I might like it even more because it takes place in Brussels but it would have been just as interesting had the protagonist lived elsewhere.

What makes this book as interesting as her others, you have the feeling you are in the midst of the story, even though it took place almost two centuries ago. It is so lively. You can feel the problems of the protagonists, you understand how difficult it was for women in former times and how much as changed and how much hasn't.

Unfortunately, like Jane Austen, the Brontës all died far too early.

From the back cover:

"Charlotte Bronte's first novel, The Professor, is narrated from the viewpoint of an ambitious and self-made man.

Rejecting his aristocratic inheritance William Crimsworth goes to Brussels to find his fortune. He takes a job teaching at a boarding school for young ladies, where he begins a flirtation with Zoraide Reuter, who, out of jealousy, attempts to frustrate his courtship of Frances Henri, an attractive young woman determined to make her way in the world.

In The Professor Charlotte Bronte holds up to scrutiny the Victorian ideals of self-help and individualism. The result is an unusual love story, and a novel profoundly critical of a society in which the relationships between men and women are reduced to power struggles."

Menasse, Robert "The Capital"

Menasse, Robert "The Capital" (German: Die Hauptstadt) - 2017

I have lived in Brussels forty years ago and met my husband there. We have been back there at least once every year, most often more times. However, when my son found a job there, I realized that I have read very little about Belgium and nothing about Brussels itself. So, I went and searched some literature. This one received the German Book Prize in 2017 and was praised internationally. It is mentioned that it is the first book where Brussels is called the European capital. We have always called it that.

The book tells us about several officials from the Department of Culture and their jobs. The characters are as international as any of the offices of the European Union, they are from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and the UK.

There is also a crime story for those who love that in a book. To be honest, I have no idea why that is needed for the story especially since it doesn't really have anything to do with the main story. The protagonists are mainly officials who work for the EU and try to accomplish something, mostly their promotion. We meet bureaucrats, experts, lobbyists … It shows how the different interests within the EU have to be considered for many events, laws, regulations. Not an easy task as we all know. Yet, we all benefit from our countries being a member of this large union - even if some don't want to see that.

One of the stories within this chunky book is the plan to celebrate the 50 year anniversary with a big jubilee project and how to arrange this so that everyone is happy about the outcome. We see the difficulty of reaching a European consensus and still have every state participate in the result.

Oh, and there is a pig. One of the introductions to the book is: "The threads come together in Brussels - and a pig runs through the streets." Again, not really necessary for the story.

But what makes this story worth reading is the message it brings us about the European Union. It is one of the most important organizations we have ever been part of. It has united many countries that were enemies before, brought us not only prosperity but peace for the longest time anyone can ever remember. Just for that, I think this book is significant.

From the back cover:

"Brussels. A panorama of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. In his new novel, Robert Menasse spans a narrative arc between the times, the nations, the inevitable and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and big emotions.

Fenia Xenapoulou is facing a career setback. She has been 'promoted' to the Department of Culture by the Directorate General - no budget, no power, no reputation. So the 'Big Jubilee Project' comes just at the right time for her: she is to revamp the boring image of the European Commission. Her Austrian personal assistant Martin Susmann suggests proclaiming Auschwitz as the birthplace of the European Commission. Fenia is thrilled, but she didn't take the other European nations into account. Austria: a Polish camp could not be misused to question the Austrian nation. Poland: Auschwitz is a German problem. Germany: Islam, by now a part of Germany, had nothing to do with Auschwitz. What's more, Fenia can't count on David de Vriend, one of the last living witnesses, any longer: he runs to the metro station Maalbeek at the wrong time.

Inspector Brunfaut is in a difficult situation as well. He is supposed to leave a murder case covered up at the highest level at rest. But luckily he is friends with the chief computer scientists of the Brussels Police Department, who can gain access to the secret files of the public prosecutor's office. Matek, the Polish hitman, knows nothing of this when he makes his escape. But he does know that he shot the wrong guy. That’s not nothing to Matek. He would rather have become ordained a priest; the fact that he had to follow his father's and grandfather's footsteps in becoming a 'soldier of Christ', doesn’t really make him happy. And yes, there are others who are unhappy as well: the pig farmers who take to the streets with pitchforks in protest of the existing trade restrictions blocking the profitable export of pigs' ears to China."

Follett, Ken "A Column of Fire"

Follett, Ken "A Column of Fire" - 2017

I love reading about the Tudors. And I loved the two first books of the Kingsbridge Series ("The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End"). So, this was definitely a win-win situation.

This is mostly the story of the Willard family. There is a Romeo and Juliet plot, villains and heroes, Catholics and Protestants, Queens Mary I, Elizabeth I and King James I of England, Mary Queen of Scots, the history of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder plot and many other political events. This book has it all.

A very impressive novel. Ken Follett's style is fantastic, his love for detail brilliant and the stories in his book exciting.

I thought the list of real-life characters at the end of the book was very helpful. I would have also enjoyed a timeline of what happened at the time. Yes, I have the internet and plenty of other books where I can look this up but I find having it in the actual book I'm reading is actually very helpful.

Now on to the prequel, "The Evening and the Morning".

From the back cover:

"As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent epic, A Column of Fire - the chronological latest in the Kingsbridge series, following The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, and the prequel, The Evening and the Morning.

In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.

Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth. When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country’s first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. Elizabeth clings to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents.

The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter what the cost.

Exciting and ambitious, and set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire will delight longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Ken Follett."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Weidermann, Volker "Summer Before the Dark"

Weidermann, Volker "Summer Before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936" (German: Ostende - 1936, Sommer der Freundschaft) - 2014

This is a highly interesting book about German authors before and during World War II. Two very famous and important German (Austrian). Stefan Zweig was rich and successful, Joseph Roth was an alcoholic and on his way to destruction, even without the help of the Nazis. Both of them were in big danger, they were Jewish.

Stefan Zweig had spent a summer in Ostend, at the Belgian coast in the summer of 1914. In 1936, he goes back there again and invites many of his friends and colleagues to join him. Besides Joseph Roth, there are many other authors and editors, Irmgard Keun, Egon Erwin Kisch, Ernst Toller with his wife Christiane Grautoff, Arthur Koestler, Hermann Kesten, Émile Verhaeren, James Ensor, Štefan Lux, Soma Morgenstern, Annette Kolb, most of them refugees, most of them banned from publishing in Germany, but also non-authors, political activists like Willi Münzenberg, Otto Katz, Etkar André, Géza von Cziffra, Olga Benário Prestes.

In this novella, the author tries to retell the story of their meeting, their hopes and their despairs. He manages to build a picture about the end of a civilization and how it was hurtling down its own destruction. How many good and brilliant people have ended in this war, how much could they have told us, how much could they have discovered?

We can follow the writers in their view about the political situation, how different people try to do different things about it - or not. A totally interesting way to look at history from within.

Quite a few of them met later on in Sanary-sur-Mer in the South of France where many of them were interned as enemy aliens and some of them even sent to Auschwitz. Today, there is a commemorative plaque for the exiles.

From the book cover:

"It's as if they're made for each other. Two men, both falling, but holding each other up for a time.

Ostend, 1936: the Belgian seaside town is playing host to a coterie of artists, intellectuals and madmen, who find themselves in limbo while Europe gazes into an abyss of fascism and war. Among them is Stefan Zweig, a man in crisis: his German publisher has shunned him, his marriage is collapsing, his house in Austria no longer feels like home. Along with his lover Lotte, he seeks refuge in this paradise of promenades and parasols, where he reunites with his estranged friend Joseph Roth. For a moment, they create a fragile haven; but as Europe begins to crumble around them, they find themselves trapped on an uncanny kind of holiday, watching the world burn."

The author has also mentioned many many books by all those interesting authors:

Auden, W. H. "No more Peace"
Brecht, Bertolt "The Threepenny Opera" (Dreigroschenoper)
Hašek, Jaroslav "The Good Soldier Švejk" (Der Brave Soldat Schwejk)
Hesse, Hermann "Heumond" (no translation)
Huxley, Aldous "Brave New World"
Kesten, Hermann "Philipp II." (König Philipp II.)
Keun, Irmgard "After Midnight" (Nach Mitternacht)
Koestler, Arthur "Darkness at Noon" (Sonnenfinsternis)
Mann, Heinrich "Im Schlaraffenland" (no translation), "Weg zum Hades" (no translation)
Mann, Klaus "Mephisto" (Mephisto)
Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (Der Zauberberg)
Maupassant, Guy de "Bel Ami" (Bel Ami)
Neumann, Alfred "Das Kaiserreich" (La Tragédie impériale, trilogy)
Rilke, Rainer Maria "The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke" (Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke)
Roth, Joseph "Confession of a Murderer" (Beichte eines Mörders, erzählt in einer Nacht), "Weights and Measures" (Das falsche Gewicht), "The String of Pearls" (Die Geschichte der 1002. Nacht), "The Legend oft he Holy Drinker" (Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker), "Erdbeeren" (Fragment) (no translation), "Job" (Hiob), "The Ballad of the Hundred Days" (Die Hundert Tage), "The Wandering Jews" (Juden auf Wanderschaft)
Schnitzler, Arthur "Der Ruf des Lebens"
Zweig, Stefan "Anton", "Das Buch als Eingang zur Welt", "Maria Stuart", "The Royal Game/Chess Story/Chess" (Schachnovelle), "Decisive Moments in History" (Sternstunden der Menschheit), "Beware of Pity" (Ungeduld des Herzens) (his only novel). Most of these stories are short stories or novellas. They might have been translated but I didn't find many of them.

He has also mentioned many other authors without listing any of their works which are all worth reading:
Honoré de Balzac, Paul Claudel, Richard Dehmel, Fyodor Dostojewsky, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gernard Hauptmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gustav Mahler, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Wedekind, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde

Hertmans, Stefan "War and Turpentine"

Hertmans, Stefan "War and Turpentine" (Dutch/Flemish: Oorlog en terpentijn) - 2013

I had not heard about this author before even though he probably should be known in the Netherlands since there are not so many countries that write in Dutch. When it was suggested in our book club, I thought this would be a good choice to read another Belgian author.

And it was. Stefan Hertmans tells about his grandfather's life according to the memoirs the latter hat written. It is a heartwarming tale about a young man who was 23 when World War I started and had to go into a war nobody wanted. His father had been a painter and so was he. We hear a lot about that part of his life but even more about his life in the trenches in the fields of Flanders.

The story is us about the life of the protagonist as a child, a young man, a married man and later, an old man, partly through his own diary. But its also a story about the author and how he grew up with his grandfather.

A nice story, well told, very picturesque.

I read this in the original Dutch language.

From the back cover:

"Shortly before his death in 1981, Stefan Hertmans' grandfather gave him a couple of filled exercise books. Stories he’d heard as a child had led Hertmans to suspect that their contents might be disturbing, and for years he didn’t dare to open them.

When he finally did, he discovered unexpected secrets. His grandfather’s life was marked by years of childhood poverty in late-nineteenth-century Belgium, by horrific experiences on the frontlines during the First World War and by the loss of the young love of his life. He sublimated his grief in the silence of painting.

Drawing on these diary entries, his childhood memories and the stories told within Urbain’s paintings, Hertmans has produced a poetic novelisation of his grandfather’s story, brought to life with great imaginative power and vivid detail.

War and Turpentine is an enthralling search for a life that coincided with the tragedy of a century - and a posthumous, almost mythical attempt to give that life a voice at last."

We read this in our international book club in May 2018.

Kross, Jaan "Professor Martens' Departure"

Kross, Jaan "Professor Martens' Departure" (Estonian: Professor Martensi ärasõit) - 1984

I meant to read a book about Estonia for my project "Travel the World Through Books".

And I read a book about Estonia through the life of an Estonian diplomat under the Russian Czar, Friedrich Fromhold Martens. So much history there. Professor Martens wrote a lot of books about international law and was highly involved in establishing what we would call International Law now. He was among those politicians who negotiated after the end of the Russo-Japanese war and was even falsely reported of receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace which he certainly would have deserved. But he received various other prizes and honorary degrees. One of his major achievements was the establishment of the World Court in The Hague.

So, even though this claims to be a novel, it reads as a biography and it is probably more accurate than many others who claim to be one. It doesn't take long while reading this book that you want to know more about the character and whether he really was as described. Google is full with articles about him. And this book is full with details, a very rich tale of an interesting life in an area we still don't know enough about.

From the back cover:

"Widely read in Europe, the Estonian novelist Jaan Kross is considered one of the most important writers of the Baltic region, and is an often-named candidate for the Nobel Prize.

His new historical novel, Professor Martens’ Departure, is written in a classic elegiac style reminiscent of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, and it evokes the complex world of czarist Russian society at the turn of the century. The character of Professor Martens is based on an actual official of the czarist reign, a distinguished Estonian jurist curiously reminiscent of Henry Kissinger.

Faced with a dire financial crisis in Russia, Professor Martens orchestrates a major loan from the French government to stave off famine; as time passes, however, he realizes that he has managed to perpetuate a brutal regime that keeps its political prisoners in chains.

This fictional memoir, written at the end of Martens’ life, finds him reliving his past and questioning the degree to which he has sacrificed himself to maintain a corrupt regime, one that ultimately disdains both him and his people. Considered an outsider by the czar’s adviser, Martens is nonetheless needed for his skills. Still, he is marginalized and kept in the shadows.

Far more than just a political or philosophical novel, Professor Martens’ Departure is an astonishing reconstruction of czarist Russia."

Unigwe, Chika "On Black Sisters' Street"

Unigwe, Chika "On Black Sisters' Street" (Dutch: Fata Morgana) - 2007

4 African girls live in Antwerp, Belgium. A beautiful city. But the life of the girls is not that beautiful, they were brought to Europe to work as prostitutes, their Antwerp is the red light district. We often hear stories about these girls who are kept like slaves but never with many details.

Chika Unigwe described their world to us in a highly interesting manner, she is certainly an author worth watching for.

Sisi, Ama, Efe and Joyce all come from Nigeria (well, Joyce came to Belgium from Sudan via Nigeria) and we learn their stories bit by bit, how they ended up in this life, even think they chose this life themselves, how their old lives had crumbled slowly but surely. We don't just get to meet the girls but also their families, learn about their background.

A challenging, breathtaking story. And of course, this happens in any city in the Western world. Time to do something about it.

Like Mariama Bâ's "So Long a Letter" this book was mentioned in the article "The non-western books that every student should read". I think I need to write another blog about that.

From the back cover:

"On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe -and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives. 

Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true - if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else - they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week’s wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future.

Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe’s hidden photograph, Ama’s lifelong search for a father, Joyce’s true name, and Sisi’s deepest secrets - and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a powerful, sinister stranger.

On Black Sisters Street marks the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors. Raw, vivid, unforgettable, and inspired by a powerful oral storytelling tradition, this novel illuminates the dream of the West - and that dream’s illusion and annihilation - as seen through African eyes. It is a story of courage, unity, and hope, of women’s friendships and of bonds that, once forged, cannot be broken."

Chevalier, Tracy "The Lady and the Unicorn"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Lady and the Unicorn" - 2003

I've read quite a few of Tracy Chevalier's books. This is my fifth and it is all about a painting we hardly know anything about.

My fifth book by this remarkable author. Tracy Chevalier manages to weave history into her novels like nobody else. Even if her characters did not exist, it makes you feel like they did.

In this case, she tells the story of the Unicorn tapestries that were woven sometime in the 16th century . Little is known about them but you can almost imagine that the way Tracy Chevalier tells us is how it all actually happened.

This is the story of real tapestries called "The Lady and the Unicorn", six tapestries, each of them representing one of our five senses, sight (La Vue), sound (L'Ouïe), smell (L'Odorat), touch (Le Toucher), taste (Le Goût)  and a sixth called Mon Seul Désir (My only desire).

But even if you're not interested in history or art at all, this is a nice story about life in the Middle Ages. Or, if you are interested, you can go and see the tapestries in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (former Musée de Cluny) in Paris.

For me, the part that happened in Brussels was the most interesting. I used to live in Brussels and we still visit as often as possible. It is one of the loveliest towns around and you can still see all the guild houses and most of the other parts they are talking about nowadays.

From the back cover:

"It was the commission of a lifetime. Jean Le Viste, a fifteenth-century nobleman close to the King, hires an artist to design six tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. Nicolas des Innocents overcomes his surprise at being offered this commission when he catches sight of his patron's daughter, Claude. His pursuit of her pulls him into the web of fragile relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, lovers and servants.

It was a revolutionary design.

In Brussels, renowned weaver Georges de la Chapelle takes on the biggest challenge of his career. Never before has he attempted a work that puts so much at stake. Sucked into a world of temptation and seduction, he and his family are consumed by the project and by their dealings with the rogue painter from Paris. The results changed all their lives."

Grimm, Hans Herbert "Schlump"

Grimm, Hans Herbert aka Emil Schulz "Schlump. The Story of an unknown soldier" (German: Schlump. Geschichten und Abenteuer des unbekannten Musketiers Emil Schulz, genannt 'Schlump', von ihm selbst erzählt) - 1928

I have never read "All Quiet on the Western Front" * even though it has been on my wishlist forever whereas I never heard about this one. The author writes about the same war as Erich Maria Remarque but he decided to publish his book anonymously under the name "Schlump".

An interesting read, Schlump describes the various faces of war, the different kind of jobs a solider is forced to do, from sitting in an office to fighting in the trenches. We have it all first-hand, from someone who saw it all with his own, very critical eyes. Therefore, it was a good idea he didn't tell anyone his name at the time, he certainly would have ended up in one of Hitler's concentration camps. This way, he survived.

Highly interesting read.

From the back cover:

"Schlump is seventeen, a romantic, a chancer and a dreamer. It's 1914 so naturally he volunteers for war. In France he is assigned an administrative position in a small town and has a marvellous time. But when he gets to the trenches, where death and mindless destruction are the everyday, he starts to understand something about war."

Similar Books:
Remarque, Erich Maria "Im Westen Nichts Neues" (All Quiet on the Western Front) - 1929
Renn, Ludwig "Krieg" (War) - 1928

* I have in the meantime, see here.

Mitchell, David "Cloud Atlas"

Mitchell, David "Cloud Atlas" - 2004

An interesting book. Quite different from anything I've read before. A mixture of a few genres I like and others that I'm not so keen on. Imagine Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Defoe, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, Michael Crighton, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Douglas Adams and Margaret Atwood got together to write one continuous story going from any of their times and genres to the next. That's about what the result would be. Really, very interesting and hard to describe.

It's almost like several short stories in one book, only they do belong to each other. The closest type of book I have ever read must be "If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller" (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) by Italo Calvino although that is still quite a different story.

I think you have to like dystopian literature, otherwise this might not be for you but apart from that, the writing is quite captivating. We start in the past, get to know the protagonists and their stories, move into the future and then go back to see the end of the different stories. In short: quite fascinating.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2026.

From the back cover:

"Six interlocking lives - one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us."

And another one:

"A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’ s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us."

Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong"

Faulks, Sebastian "Birdsong. A Novel of Love and War" - 1993

The novel starts with a quote: Rabindranath Tagore says in "Gitanjali: "When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable."

The author has successfully tried to describe something unsurpassable, something so astonishingly unimaginable that I am asking myself two questions: Why I haven't read this any earlier? and Why isn't this book better known? It should be an obligatory read for every teenager who thinks about entering the army and every politician who even remotely considers starting a war.

Now, today wars are fought differently. Or so they want to make us believe. But if you read "Birdsong", you will see that the tragedies of losing friends and loved ones in a war cannot be changed, it will remain the same, no matter how they get killed.

There are few war books that describe the feelings of the soldiers during their fights as good as this one. An absolute MUST.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself."

Brijs, Stefan "The Angel Maker"

Brijs, Stefan "The Angel Maker" (Dutch/Flemish: De engelenmaker) - 2005

A story about a doctor who clones lives a very private life with his children in a remote village in the German speaking part of Belgium. As the story unfolds, we get to know his secret.

We had chosen the book because there are only a few Dutch books translated into English. We had different feelings about the story. It was gripping, a thriller, thought-provoking.

We learned about Asperger syndrome, autism and how inmates of asylums used to be treated. And about cloning.

It was interesting to see the contrast between modern science and narrow-mindedness. The book was easy to read but had so many layers. There was a lot of symbolism, the trinity appeared again and again.

The author did a great research, a lot of information and facts seemed correct.

Some really enjoyed the book, others found it disturbing and depressing, even horrific, disgusting, took some of us way past our comfort zone. It is very gothic-like.

The small town mentality was disturbing. We found that they are the same everywhere.

There was nobody in the whole novel we could relate to, even the children were portrayed so inhuman, we could only feel empathy for the school teacher.

We like to say that "science is value free", that there can be no limits, it's discovery for the sake of discovery. What do we do with the discoveries, someone will use it who doesn't have the inhibitions. The quote "Medicine has allowed us to die more slowly." was mentioned.

You know from the first sentence, this is not going to end well. He leaves a lot of questions open.

I didn't care much for the title, in German, an angel maker is someone who performs an unsafe illegal abortion, However, as a subject, this was just as bad. I hadn't looked forward to the book and didn't care for it much. I also didn't like the (original) cover picture or the one of the artist. The former reminded me of a fried egg gone bad, the latter made me think the author was writing about himself.

Still, we had a very interesting discussion about a sensitive subject.

We discussed this in our international book club in November 2012.

From the back cover:

"A literary page-turner about one man’s macabre ambition to create life - and secure immortality

The village of Wolfheim is a quiet little place until the geneticist Dr. Victor Hoppe returns after an absence of nearly twenty years. The doctor brings with him his infant children - three identical boys all sharing a disturbing disfigurement. He keeps them hidden away until Charlotte, the woman who is hired to care for them, begins to suspect that the triplets - and the good doctor - aren’t quite what they seem. As the villagers become increasingly suspicious, the story of Dr. Hoppe’s past begins to unfold, and the shocking secrets that he has been keeping are revealed. A chilling story that explores the ethical limits of science and religion, The Angel Maker is a haunting tale in the tradition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein. Brought to life by internationally bestselling author Stefan Brijs, this eerie tale promises to get under readers’ skin."

Hesse, Karen "Letters from Rifka"

Hesse, Karen "Letters from Rifka" - 1992

I picked up this book at a school book fair because it looked quite interesting. The story is told by Rifka, a Jewish girl who has to leave the Ukraine with her family to go to America. On the way, she gets sick and cannot go with the family but has to stay behind in Antwerp. She writes down imaginary letters to her cousin in the margins of a Pushkin book and that way we learn about the lives of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the troubles they had to go through in order to get to lead a decent life.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family's flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America."

The novel is recommended for 9 to 12 year olds but I am sure it is still interesting for older teens.

I also recommend "Out of the Dust" by the same author, about life during the Great Depression. 

Mulisch, Harry "The Discovery of Heaven"

Mulisch, Harry "The Discovery of Heaven" (Dutch: De ontdekking van de hemel) - 1992

An extraordinary book that touches many different subjects. Science, technology, war, religion, philosophy, social values, politics, intelligence, adolescence, family life.

The story of two men and a woman, a child, a quest for the meaning of life.

An almost epic tale. Not exactly an easy read but well worth it.

Some quotes I really liked (my translations will probably not be the same as in the book, therefore I add the original Dutch text in brackets):

When the extraordinary becomes the everyday norm, a revolution is going on. (Wanneer het onmogelijke het dagelijkse wordt, is er een revolutie aan de gang.)

On political parties
In Cuba, you could learn the meaning of radicalism. In the United States, the left wing of the Democratic Party was still more right than a right-wing party in the Netherlands, and a party as right as the Republican Party, let alone its right wing, didn't exist here in a serious way, but in Cuba the regime was considerably more left-wing than even the Communist Party in the Netherlands. (Op Cuba kon je de betekenis van het woord radicaliteit leren. In de Verenigde Staten was de linkervleugel van de Democratische Partij altijd nog rechtser dan een rechtse partij in Nederland, en een partij zo rechts als de Republikeinse Partij, laat staan haar rechtervleugel, bestond hier helemaal niet op een serieuze manier; maar op Cuba was het bewind nog aanzienlijk linkser dan in Nederland zelfs de communistische partij.)

On people in different seasons
The people looked sullen and unhappy ... Can you think of Chopin or Stravinsky in such a climate? They would not have existed in any case, and further, there was never anything important imagined or invented ... (De mensen keken nors en ontevreden … Waren Chopin of Strawinsky denkbaar in zo'n klimaat?  Ze waren er in elk geval niet verschenen, en ook verder was er nooit iets belangrijks bedacht of uitgevonden … )

On the meaning of life
Why was there actually something rather than nothing? If everything still came to an end, what sense did it make that there had ever been anything? Had there actually been anything? If one day there would be no more people, no one who could remember anything, could you say that anything ever had happened? ... (Waarom was er eigenlijk iets, en niet niets? Als alles toch voorbij ging, wat had het dan voor zin dat her er ooit was geweest?  Was het er dan eigenlijk wel geweest? Als er op een dag geen mensen meer zouden zijn, niemand meer die zich nog iets kon herinneren, kon je dan zeggen dat er ooit iets was gebeurd? …)

From the back cover:

"This magnificent epic has been compared to works by Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, and Dostoyevsky. Harry Mulisch's magnum opus is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes -- friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil -- suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative.

The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together. They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end. Abounding in philosophical, psychological and theological inquiries, yet laced with humor that is as infectious as it is willful, The Discovery of Heaven lingers in the mind long after it has been read. It not only tells an accessible story, but also convinces one that it just might be possible to bring order into the chaos of the world through a story."

This novel was voted best Dutch book ever.

We discussed this in our international book club in February 2004.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.