What We Are Reading Today: No Ordinary Assignment

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Updated 07 July 2023
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What We Are Reading Today: No Ordinary Assignment

Author: Jane Ferguson

This is a wonderful glimpse into a brilliant foreign correspondent.

Not only does Jane Ferguson have extensive experience reporting in conflict zones across the globe, she has a terrific ability to humanize the stories of the marginalized and voiceless.

Her fearlessness, and commitment to her craft is outstanding.

When the Taliban claimed Kabul in 2021, she was one of the last Western journalists to remain at the airport as thousands of Afghans, including some of her colleagues, struggled to evacuate.

Ferguson "has covered nearly every war front and humanitarian crisis of our time," said a review on Goodreads.com.

Afghanistan was the "Vietnam of our era,” Ferguson writes in her memoir.

She managed to dodge injury in Somalia, Afghanistan and Palestine even as she kept taking risks.

Her descriptions are carefully rendered; the stories never blur into each other.

"With an open-hearted humanity we rarely see in conflict stories, 'No Ordinary Assignment' shows what it means to build an authentic career against the odds," said the review.

 

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Mind of a Bee’ by Lars Chittka

Updated 08 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Mind of a Bee’ by Lars Chittka

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals?

In “The Mind of a Bee,” Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities.

He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness.


Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq

Updated 08 June 2025
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Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq

  • Mushtaq won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language
  • As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage”

HASSAN, India: All writers draw on their experience, whether consciously or not, says Indian author Banu Mushtaq — including the titular tale of attempted self-immolation in her International Booker Prize-winning short story collection.
Mushtaq, who won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language — said the author’s responsibility is to reflect the truth.
“You cannot simply write describing a rose,” said the 77-year-old, who is also a lawyer and activist.
“You cannot say it has got such a fragrance, such petals, such color. You have to write about the thorns also. It is your responsibility, and you have to do it.”
Her book “Heart Lamp,” a collection of 12 powerful short stories, is also her first book translated into English, with the prize shared with her translator Deepa Bhasthi.
Critics praised the collection for its dry and gentle humor, and its searing commentary on the patriarchy, caste and religion.
Mushtaq has carved an alternative path in life, challenging societal restrictions and perceptions.
As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage.”
Born into a Muslim family in 1948, she studied in Kannada, which is spoken mostly in India’s southern Karnataka state by around 43 million people, rather than Urdu, the language of Islamic texts in India and which most Muslim girls learnt.
She attended college, and worked as a journalist and also as a high school teacher.

Constricted life

But after marrying for love, Mushtaq found her life constricted.
“I was not allowed to have any intellectual activities. I was not allowed to write,” she said.
“I was in that vacuum. That harmed me.”
She recounted how as a young mother aged around 27 with possible postpartum depression, and ground down by domestic life, had doused petrol on herself and on the “spur of a moment” readied to set herself on fire.
Her husband rushed to her with their three-month-old daughter.
“He took the baby and put her on my feet, and he drew my attention to her and he hugged me, and he stopped me,” Mushtaq told AFP.
The experience is nearly mirrored in her book — in its case, the protagonist is stopped by her daughter.
“People get confused that it might be my life,” the writer said.
Explaining that while not her exact story, “consciously or subconsciously, something of the author, it reflects in her or his writing.”
Books line the walls in Mushtaq’s home, in the small southern Indian town of Hassan.
Her many awards and certificates — including a replica of the Booker prize she won in London in May — are also on display.
She joked that she was born to write — at least that is what a Hindu astrological birth chart said about her future.
“I don’t know how it was there, but I have seen the birth chart,” Mushtaq said with a laugh, speaking in English.
The award has changed her life “in a positive way,” she added, while noting the fame has been a little overwhelming.
“I am not against the people, I love people,” she said referring to the stream of visitors she gets to her home.
“But with this, a lot of prominence is given to me, and I don’t have any time for writing. I feel something odd... Writing gives me a lot of pleasure, a lot of relief.”

‘The writer is always pro-people’
Mushtaq’s body of work spans six short story collections, an essay collection and poetry.
The stories in “Heart Lamp” were chosen from the six short story collections, dating back to 1990.
The Booker jury hailed her characters — from spirited grandmothers to bumbling religious clerics — as “astonishing portraits of survival and resilience.”
The stories portray Muslim women going through terrible experiences, including domestic violence, the death of children and extramarital affairs.
Mushtaq said that while the main characters in her books are all Muslim women, the issues are universal.
“They (women) suffer this type of suppression and this type of exploitation, this type of patriarchy everywhere,” she said. “A woman is a woman, all over the world.”
While accepting that even the people for whom she writes may not like her work, Mushtaq said she remained dedicated to providing wider truths.
“I have to say what is necessary for the society,” she said.
“The writer is always pro-people... With the people, and for the people.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer’

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Updated 07 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer’

  • Backman transforms personal pain into collective catharsis

Author: Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman captures the unraveling of a mind with devastating tenderness in his novella “And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer.”

This spare yet monumental novella, published in 2016, traces dementia’s heartbreak through intimate dialogues between a grandfather and grandson. Its power lies not in tragedy, but in love’s fierce endurance against oblivion.  

Grandpa is trapped in a shrinking mental town square. He navigates fragmented conversations with grandson Noah (whom he refers to as Noahnoah), clutches vanishing memories, and wrestles with unspoken tensions with his son, Ted. All while preparing for the final goodbye — to others and himself.

The shrinking square is dementia’s cruel architecture made visceral. Yet within his exchanges with his grandson, luminous defiance shines. Gentle jokes. Shared secrets. Proof that love outruns oblivion.

Backman’s triumph is avoiding sentimentality. No manipulative tears here, just raw honesty: Grandpa’s panic when words fail, Ted’s helpless anger, Noahnoah’s childhood wisdom becoming the family’s compass. Generational bonds offer lifelines. Grandpa lives in the stories, not his head.

The resonance is universal. Readers who are familiar with dementia’s path will recognize the misplaced keys, the names that vanish, the sudden foreignness of familiar rooms. Backman transforms personal pain into collective catharsis.

A minor flaw surfaces though: Ted’s perspective aches for deeper exploration. His pain lingers tantalizingly unresolved.

My final verdict is that one must devour this in one sitting. Tissues mandatory. For anyone who loves, or has loved, someone slipping away, this story can become an anchor.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Earth Transformed

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Updated 07 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Earth Transformed

  • Frankopan shows that when past empires failed to act sustainably, they were met with catastrophe

Author: Peter Frankopan

"The Earth Transformed" reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development — and demise — of civilizations across time.
Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history.

Frankopan shows that when past empires failed to act sustainably, they were met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, the book will radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The World at First Light

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Updated 06 June 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The World at First Light

  • In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance

Author: Bernd Roeck

The cultural epoch we know as the Renaissance emerged at a certain time and in a certain place. Why then and not earlier? Why there and not elsewhere? In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance.

Roeck shows that the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, including the science of the medieval Arab world, played a critical role in shaping the beginnings of Western modernity.