A review from Siriol McAvoy of our last BookTalk event about David Jones’ In Parenthesis, which took place on 11th October 2016, to whet some appetites on the eve of our next event.
Tag: war
David Jones as visual artist
Although Cardiff BookTalk is focussing on his writing in In Parenthesis, David Jones was also a talented visual artist. This was the subject of a recent exhibition at Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives: https://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/exhibition-david-jones-1895-1974/ It is also discussed brilliantly by Fiona MacCarthy in the following article: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/oct/10/soldier-poet-painter-david-jones-britains-outsider
Owen Sheers on In Parenthesis
On 10 July 1916, the 15th battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers attacked Mametz Wood in northern France. Their assault was part of the recently launched Somme offensive, and followed the now familiar method of British attacks over this period. Walking in four lines across … Continue reading Owen Sheers on In Parenthesis
BookTalk event, 11 Oct 2016: David Jones, In Parenthesis (1937)
In the centenary year of the Battle of the Somme, Cardiff BookTalk returns for 2016/17 with an exciting event considering David Jones’s First World War classic, In Parenthesis (1937).
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003): Event Review
A report by Rob Lloyd on the second BookTalk of the 2015/16 season, which took place on 9 Dec 2015: an exploration of Khaled Hosseini’s debut best-seller, The Kite Runner, to coincide with Human Rights Day.
Excerpt from an interview with Khaled Hosseini
It seems that the only people who were not fans of the book were Hosseini’s Afghan compatriots in America. On the internet he was called ‘another Salman Rushdie’, and the Afghan community in northern California attacked him in the press and on the radio. ‘It was quite scathing,’ he says, eating sweetmeats and drinking tea in the back garden of his home in San Jose, where he has lived for the past 27 years.—From The Telegraph‘s 2007 interview with Khaled Hosseini.
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner: Excerpt #3
I remembered the day on the hill I had pelted Hassan with pomegranates and tried to provoke him. He’d just stood there, doing nothing, red juice soaking through his shirt like blood. Then he’d taken the pomegranate from my hand, crushed it against his forehead. Are you satisfied now? he’d hissed. Do you feel better? I hadn’t been happy and I hadn’t felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.—Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2003), ch. 22
