Suroor Alikhan
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suroora.bsky.social
Suroor Alikhan
@suroora.bsky.social
91 followers 69 following 160 posts
Book blogger, book addict, amateur photographer, lover of music, stories and language, and incorrigible dreamer. Blog at talking-about-books.com. Also write reviews of travel books by women for Women on the Road.
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suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Samantha Harvey's Orbital, a luminous book about six astronauts in space. Beautifully written with an astonishing level of detail, almost meditative, and a reminder that our earth—our only home—is incredibly precious. #fiction
talking-about-books.com/2025/11/08/o...
Orbital: Samantha Harvey
Published by Vintage, 2023, 136 pages “Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene. Somet…
talking-about-books.com
November 8, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Suroor Alikhan
eekhaut.bsky.social
It happens to me...
November 7, 2025 at 8:56 PM
suroora.bsky.social
Three new posts on Women's Travel Books! On #Italy, #UnitedStates and #Pakistan.

talkingaboutbookswomenstravel.review

#travelbooks #travelbooksbywomen
November 7, 2025 at 11:34 AM
suroora.bsky.social
Save the dates! The Hyderabad Literary Festival 2026 is 24-26 Jan., Hyderabad, India. HLF is a multi-genre, multidiscipline, and multilingual event with nearly 300 writers, artistes, academics, scholars, and publishers from India and abroad each year. #literaryfestival
November 6, 2025 at 3:49 PM
suroora.bsky.social
Do your bit to make the Hyderabad Literary Festival happen!

Payment details here: forms.gle/jc3UyfApbRhz...

HLF is gearing up to bring you an exciting array of speakers, artists and performers in January 2026. Mark your calendars and stay tuned!
More info on www.hydlitfest.org.
#literaryfestival
November 5, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by Suroor Alikhan
marinasofia.bsky.social
Warwick Prize for Women in Translation longlist 2025 clairemcalpine.com/2025/11/04/w...
Warwick Prize for Women in Translation longlist 2025
Fourteen titles have been longlisted for the 8th annual award of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. The 2025 competition received a total of 145 eligible entries from 34 languages. The lon…
clairemcalpine.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:08 AM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, a collection of short stories about Black women. Sensuous, funny and perceptive, with memorable and completely believable characters. #fiction
talking-about-books.com/2025/11/01/t...
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies: Deesha Philyaw
Published by One, 2020, 217 pages A girl watches her mother make the perfect peach cobbler every week for her date with the married pastor; a woman writes to her half-sister about whose existence s…
talking-about-books.com
November 1, 2025 at 5:28 PM
suroora.bsky.social
3 new posts on talkingaboutbookswomenstravel.review!
Elizabeth Pisani on Indonesia, Gwen Maka on cycling from Seattle to Costa Rica, and Lina Boegli on travelling the world on her own in 1892. All intrepid travellers! #travelbooks #travelbooksbywomen @elizabethpisani.ternyata.org
October 31, 2025 at 3:46 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Jonathan C. Slaght's Owls of the Eastern Ice—The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl. Slaght researches fish owls in Primorye, southeastern Russia, to help protect them. Vividly written. #naturebooks @jonathanslaght.com
talking-about-books.com/2025/10/25/o...
Owls of the Eastern Ice—The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl: Jonathan C. Slaght
Published by Allen Lane / Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2020, 348 pages “This dishevelled mass of wood-chip brown regarded us warily with electric-yellow eyes. … It was clearly an owl, but bigg…
talking-about-books.com
October 25, 2025 at 5:52 PM
suroora.bsky.social
New reviews on Women’s Travel Books! Sally Howard on sexual mores in India; Alba Kunadu Sumprim’s on moving to her native Ghana; and Diccon Bewes on retracing Jemimah Morrell’s journey on the 1863 Thomas Cook tour of Switzerland. @salvolatile.bsky.social
talkingaboutbookswomenstravel.review
October 24, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by Suroor Alikhan
afterdinnerconversation.com
October 21, 2025 at 4:05 AM
suroora.bsky.social
Happy Diwali from the Hyderabad Literary Festival!
October 20, 2025 at 10:20 AM
suroora.bsky.social
Three new reviews on Women's Travel Books this week! Take trains around the US with Jenny Diski, follow the olive route with Carol Drinkwater, and travel to Papua New Guinea with Kira Salak. @carol4olivefarm.bsky.social #travelbooks #travelbooksbywomen
talkingaboutbookswomenstravel.review
October 19, 2025 at 7:06 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, a classic that I only just discovered and found impossible to put down, despite it being over 1200 pages. Great translation by Robin Buss. @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social #booksintranslation
talking-about-books.com/2025/10/18/t...
The Count of Monte Cristo: Alexandre Dumas
Translated from French by Robin BussPublished by Penguin, 1996, 1276 pages. Original version serialized in 1844-46 and published as a book in 1846. First unabridged translation by Emma Hardy, 1846.…
talking-about-books.com
October 18, 2025 at 5:30 PM
suroora.bsky.social
These are just four of the books reviewed on Women's Travel Books, the new section of my blog that highlights #travelbooks by women. Check it out! I'm adding more all the time.
@monisharajesh.bsky.social @noosarowiwa.bsky.social #travelbooksbywomen #books #bookreviews
October 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: The Peacock and the Sparrow, IS Berry's spy thriller set in #Bahrain. Shane Collins is CIA spy posted to Manama. He gets more involved in local politics than he should, with far-reaching consequences. #fiction
@atriabooks.bsky.social
talking-about-books.com/2025/10/11/t...
The Peacock and the Sparrow: I.S. Berry
Published by No Exit Press / Atria Books, 2023, 338 pages. Shane Collins is a CIA spy, posted in Manama, Bahrain. He is coming to the end of his career and merely wants to see his final posting out…
talking-about-books.com
October 11, 2025 at 6:14 PM
suroora.bsky.social
Congratulations to Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Awarded him the prize for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”. @nobelprize.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...
László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel prize in literature 2025
The Hungarian novelist whose books ‘reaffirm the power of art’ was announced as winner at a ceremony in Stockholm
www.theguardian.com
October 9, 2025 at 12:26 PM
suroora.bsky.social
Big news! Check out my new website for #bookreviews of #travelbooks by women. These are the reviews I wrote for Women on the Road that I will now move to my website. Over the next several months, I will publish them here, starting with the oldest, as well as reviews of any new ones that I read.
Women's Travel Books
Reviewing travel books by, and about, women
talkingaboutbookswomenstravel.review
October 7, 2025 at 1:35 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: The first book in Chris Stewart's trilogy about moving to a rundown farm in Andalucía. Funny, moving and thoroughly enjoyable. #memoir
talking-about-books.com/2025/10/04/d...
Driving Over Lemons—An Optimist in Andalucía: Chris Stewart
Published by Sort Of Books, 1999, 247 pages. In 1988, Chris Stewart and his wife Ana bought an old, remote farm in Las Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Andalucía. This is the first book…
talking-about-books.com
October 4, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Suroor Alikhan
worldwildlife.bsky.social
Dr Jane Goodall 💚

3 April 1934 - 1 October 2025
October 1, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Suroor Alikhan
eekhaut.bsky.social
Any reason to visit your bookshop will do...
October 1, 2025 at 8:27 AM
suroora.bsky.social
A book for #internationaltranslationday2025: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Iraqi author Ahmed Sadaawi. Saadawi transposes Frankenstein to Baghdad in the 2000s, after the US invasion. A darkly comic novel and utterly original. Translated by Jonathan Wright.
talking-about-books.com/2019/09/28/f...
Frankenstein in Baghdad: Ahmed Sadaawi
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan WrightPublished by OneWorld Publications / Penguin, 2018, 272 pages. Original version published in 2013. Ahmed Sadaawi takes the story of Frankenstein and transpo…
talking-about-books.com
September 30, 2025 at 5:05 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Caitlin Weaver's Such A Good Family, about the fallout from a rape. And about relationships in all their complexity. Lorrie and Eden are best friends. But how will they cope when Lorrie's son rapes Eden's daughter?
talking-about-books.com/2025/09/27/s...
Such a Good Family: Caitlin Weaver
Published by Storm Publishing, 2024, 352 pages. Two perfect suburban families: Lorrie and Ed, and their children Knox, Archie and Chloé; and Eden and Witt, and their daughter Summer. Summer and Kno…
talking-about-books.com
September 27, 2025 at 4:24 PM
suroora.bsky.social
A #bookintranslation: Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, about a man living in the grey zone in Ukraine, between the Russian army and Ukrainian forces. A political story, told by an innocent. Translated by Boris Dralyuk. #fiction
talking-about-books.com/2022/04/02/g...
Grey Bees: Andrey Kurkov
Translated from Russian by Boris DralyukPublished by MacLehose Press, 2021, 352 pages. Original version published in 2018. Set in the period after the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, this book by …
talking-about-books.com
September 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM
suroora.bsky.social
This week's #bookreview: Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, a dreamlike book about the relationship between a wealthy man and a geisha. With a strong sense of place. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. #fiction #japaneseauthor @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social
talking-about-books.com/2025/09/20/s...
Snow Country: Yasunari Kawabata
Translated from Japanese by Edward G. SeidenstickerPublished by Penguin, 1956, 121 pages. Original version published in 1948. Shimamura takes a train to a town in the mountains of Japan. It is cold…
talking-about-books.com
September 20, 2025 at 8:08 AM