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WHOSE MAN IN HAVANA? By John Graham, Reviewed by Paul Durand

 

                             WHOSE MAN IN HAVANA?

                 Adventures from the Far Side of Diplomacy

                              By John W. Graham


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 John Graham

 

Review byPaul Durand


John Graham has produced a rollicking, engaging memoir - a combination of black humour, wry observations on life in exotic climes and - woven throughout - sophisticated socio-political analyses of places most of us really don't want to experience in any depth.

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - October 2015 - By John Klassen (Review)

 

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Reviews by John Klassen

 

Alistair Urquhart

 

Urquhart (1919- ) is a retired Scottish businessman. He wrote The Forgotten Soldier at the age of 90. It became a best-seller and Urquhart was much in demand as a public speaker.  After retiring from business, he taught computer skills to retired people and continued with his passion for ballroom dancing.

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - September 2015 - By John Klassen (Review)

 

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Reviews by John Klassen

 

David Holdsworth

 

David Holdsworth is a retired public service officer who worked abroad and held a number of positions including in the Privy Council Office. He has now turned his skills to writing with a sharp eye for the foibles of government and public service.  His first novel: The Ambassador’s Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of Embassy Life described the antics of diplomatic life in a fictitious country.  His new book turns inward with a funny, satirical focus on the “tough on crime” agenda of the current government.

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - June/July 2015 - By John Klassen (Review)

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John Klassen

 

Mairtin O Cadhain

O Cadhain (1905-1970), whose name could most closely be rendered in English as Marteen O’Kine, was an Irish novelist, short story writer, journalist and school teacher. O Cadhain is considered Gaelic Ireland’s most important writer and a pioneer in Irish-language modernism. He wrote principally in Irish and also translated some works from English. The Dirty Dust is considered one of the greatest achievements of the Irish novel.

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - May 2015 - By John Klassen (Review)

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 John Klassen

 

Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Vasquez (1973-) was described by The Guardian as, “among the most inventive and erudite or Colombia’s emerging generation of novelists”.  He lived in Paris (1996-1999) and received a doctorate in Latin American Literature from the Sorbonne, followed by Barcelona for about 10 years, until 2012; he now lives in Bogota.  Vasquez has written three principal novels: The Informers, The Secret History of Costaguana, and The Sound of Things Falling; the last won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2014; the first South American writer to do so.  There were two earlier novels, but Vasquez prefers to ignore them. 

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - April 2015 - By John Klassen (Reviews)

 

 

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John Klassen

Helen Macdonald

Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the University of Cambridge Department of History and Political Science. Her book H is for Hawk (2014) won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Costa Book of the Year Award.  Earlier books include Shaler’s Fish (2001) and Falcon (2006).

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - March 2015 - By John Klassen (Reviews)

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John Klassen

 

Gary Shteyngart

Shteyngart was born in Leningrad (1972) and moved to the USA at the age of seven.  His novels, which have received various awards, include The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), Absurdistan (2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010); he published a memoir, Little Failure (2014).

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KLASSEN ON BOOKS - February 2015 - By John Klassen (reviews)

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John Klassen

Elena Ferrante

Ferrante is an interesting person and a terrific writer.  She is the author of seven novels over 20 years.  She is very popular in Europe and increasingly so in North America, but she maintains a strict anonymity.  She has given interviews only in writing, and has provided a bare minimum of personal information:  she is from Naples, she is a mother.

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UNE COMEDIE FAMILIALE Par Marie-Rose Simon (Critique de livre)

mr july 2017

Marie-Rose Simon

Une Comédie familiale de Isabelle Hausser

Editions de Fallois
Paris 2003

Un ex-diplomate français reconverti en directeur européen d’une multinationale et affecté à Bruxelles, Rachel, 48 ans va vivre entre mari, fils, père et tante, une année de transformations profondes, personnelle et familiales.

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