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Article: Best of the year: books.(Mixed Media)
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib's Just Like A River (Arris Books, NI 359) got a five-star fiction rating. This superbly intricate narrative follows the lives of a cross-section of Damascus society against a background of escalating tension. The book's 100 or so pages touch upon large themes while maintaining a sharp focus on the intimate human scale of events.
Also outstanding was A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (Canongate, NI 358), a thoughtful first novel by Gil Courtemanche set in Rwanda in the days leading up to the 1994 genocide. Our reviewer says: 'This is one that has stayed with me and that I have thought about time and again'. A moving and brave meditation on ...