You are eight years old. Teeth have been brushed. Pyjamas are on. As you crawl into bed, someone you admire opens a colourful picture book. You hear about Alice’s experience with a mad hatter—or perhaps about a spoiled girl and three bears. These worlds are explored nightly with a day’s anticipation from the storyteller to yourself. […]
Recently, I have been reading two books. The first is a non-fiction work by British journalist Tim Marshall called The Power of Geography. It explores international diplomacy and presents ‘ten maps that reveal the future of our world’. Marshall discusses the geopolitical climate of various nations, including Australia, Saudi Arabia and The United Kingdom, aiming […]
Reading Haruki Murakami for the first time, I was surprised by the transparency of his writing. With my ungrounded foundation of beliefs surrounding Japanese literary culture, I had imagined the novel to whisk me away on a journey of ambiguous poetic language, alien proverbs and incredible metaphorical depths. Instead, I quickly realised that Murakami’s first […]
Edinburgh Theatre Arts’ production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Improbable Fiction, directed by David McCallum, is a heart-warming and unassuming exploration of character and the creative mind. Ayckbourn’s play is written in two very distinct acts. In the first, a group of amateur writers are introduced, coming together for a meeting where they read and critique one […]