Another charming bit of rather harmless fun through the eyes of Mma Ramotswe, written in McCall Smith’s unique voice. The somewhat moralistic tone seems appropriate in the portrayed culture.
The menfolk come off with a few scars, but that’s OK.
Winter 1959 in Jerusalem. Dem jungen Schmuel Asch gehts nicht gut. Seine Freundin hat ihn verlassen und sein Vater kann sein Studium nicht weiter finanzieren. Und doch wäre seine Diplomarbeit über Jesus aus Sicht der Juden von grosser Bedeutung. Seine These, Judas Ischariot sei keineswegs ein Verräter gewesen sondern im Gegenteil der treueste Verehrer von Jesus – eigentlich der erste und letzte echter Christ – wäre ja revolutionär. Aber Schmuel ist verzweifelt. Er verliert sein Ziel aus den Augen und hat keine Kraft, weiter zu kämpfen. Somit wirkt er vor allem als Antiheld.
Continue reading “Judas von Amos Oz”
If you’re after the sort of flippant humour you might have come to expect from Adrian Plass, then The Shadow Doctor might disappoint you. But I doubt it. You’ll be surprised – and a little confused – by the Doctor’s mysterious encounters and baffling remarks, but you’ll gradually come to realise he has an unusual and uncanny depth of perception, and a disquieting way of exposing shaky beliefs and practices.
Continue reading “The Shadow Doctor by Adrian Plass”
I recently attended a lecture (in German) by Hans-Ruedi Stadelmann, a retired astrophysicist cum theologian, on the subject of ‘A contemporary image of God?’
Continue reading “The God ‘Evolution’”
If you want the salutary facts – necessarily subjective but certainly typical – about what a refugee family experiences after arriving in Europe from a vastly different geographic and cultural background, this will fill you in.
Continue reading “No Longers Strangers? by Javed Masih”
Although this is a continuation of the complex relationships we have discovered in the earlier books of the series, it is a valid standalone story in its own right.
Continue reading “Penhaligon’s Gift by Terri Nixon”
This is no pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, eight-days-to-Christian-maturity workbook! It doesn’t offer much in the way of answers. Rather, many soul-searching questions.
Continue reading “The Making of Us by Sheridan Voysey”
This is one of the best of Dickens’ works, in my opinion.
True, it starts off heavy and bleak, but Mr. Squeers and Dotheboys Hall do play a significant rôle throughout the book. If anything, the digression involving Mr. Crummles and his performing troupe could have been omitted without loss to the story.
Continue reading “Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens”
Our kids were already a bit old for the Harry Potter books when they emerged in 1997. At that time we moved in rather narrow-minded circles and stories of witches and dark magic were frowned upon. So we never read them. Until now. As a would-be author, I can hardly ignore successful writers like J.K. Rowling.
Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling”
As a tame introduction to the work of Jean Racine, this adaptation is most helpful, presenting the plays in abridged form and in contemporary English. Unfortunately, they thereby lose some of their claim to fame as “masterpieces of one of the greatest literary artists known”.
Both plays follow the biblical narratives rather closely, while adding some drama and appropriate chorus roles for its intended cast, the girls of the Maison royale de Saint-Louis in Saint-Cyr. This boarding school was founded by king Louis XIV at the request of his second wife, Madame de Maintenon, to cater for girls from impoverished noble families.