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The Corner That Held Them – Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner has written several novels, and what sets them apart is that they are all strikingly different. Until now, I had read only Lolly Willowes, which was absolutely terrific, and the time felt right to return to her work with The Corner That Held Them.

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In a novel set in a medieval English convent with its spirited nuns, perhaps the greatest irony is that it comes into existence through an act of infidelity. The opening pages, set in the twelfth century, find Alianor de Retteville in bed with her lover, Giles, when the scene erupts into violence as her husband, Brian, storms in with his cousins. Giles is killed, but Brian spares Alianor, much to the jeers of his cousins. Brian, we are told, is a cuckolded husband who threatens to banish his wife to a nunnery, though Alianor knows the threat is hollow – his attachment to her wealth is sure to outweigh his outrage. A decade passes. Alianor dies in childbirth, and her death, in some inexplicable way, alters Brian.

He resolves to found a Benedictine nunnery at Oby in her memory, financing it with half of her dowry and keeping the other half for himself.

The site chosen was a manor called Oby. Oby had been part of Alianor’s dowry, and in the early days of their marriage they had often lived there, for it was good hawking country along the Waxle Stream; but as his taste in hunting turned to larger quarries the manor house had fallen into neglect and now only the shell of it remained, housing several families of serfs and countless bats. Now this shell was made weatherproof, whitewashed within and partitioned into dormitories and chambers. A chapel was constructed and a bell hung in the squat belfry, the barns were re-roofed and the moat was cleaned. The dedication was made to Our Lady and Saint Leonard, patron of prisoners…

The first contingent of nuns arrives and must immediately contend with the stark realities of survival.  For even a life pledged to chastity and simplicity demands food, shelter, and habitable conditions – practical necessities Brian had hardly considered.

When he chose to found his nunnery there it did not occur to him that nuns live in a place all the year round, and must feed through the hungry half of the year as well as through the plentiful half.

Tucked in a little corner of nowhere, surrounded by a flat, listless horizon, there also exists the peril of boredom.

Men with their inexhaustible interest in themselves may do well enough in a wilderness, but the shallower egoism of women demands some nourishment from the outer world, and preferably in the form of danger or disaster.

Meanwhile, Brian de Retteville dies in 1170, and, akin to fast forwarding a cinema reel, Warner propels the narrative through a succession of years – 1208, marked by the Interdict; 1223, when lightning ignites the granary; and onward – until it arrives at 1349, the year the Black Death unleashes its terror on the convent of Oby. From this point, time once again slows down, and the greater part of the novel unfolds, culminating in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

A TRAY OF BUNS, A TRAY OF NUNS…AND A PRIEST

She stared at their faces, so familiar and undecipherable. They are like a tray of buns, she thought. In some the leaven has worked more than in others, some are a little under-baked, some a little scorched, in others the spice has clotted and shows like a brown stain; but one can see that they all come out of the same oven and that one hand pulled them apart from the same lump of dough.

Spanning three decades, from 1349 to 1382, nuns and prioresses come and go at Oby, but it is Dame Alicia de Foley who leaves the deepest imprint on the convent, assuming the office just as the plague descends upon both the country and the cloister.

When Prioress Isabella first began to gasp and turn blue Dame Alicia de Foley framed a vow to Saint Leonard, patron of the convent and of all prisoners, that if their tyrant should die of her plum-stone a spire, beautiful as art and money could make it, should be added to their squat chapel.

For Prioress Alicia, a nun acutely attuned to beauty, the spire becomes the emblem of her ambition.  Over the years, the costly project inches toward completion, but only through a series of delays, setbacks, and tragedies. At the novel’s outset, she is first tested by the Black Death: nuns perish, and novices with rich dowries are withdrawn, draining the convent’s revenues even as the spire’s expenses mount. Obstacles multiply – a shortage of masons in the plague’s aftermath, simmering tensions between the builders and the manor’s residents, and a procession of further misfortunes, from deaths and murrains to a devastating flood. In time, the spire itself collapses, a nun dies, and the structure is raised again. Prioress Alicia finally sees her vision realised, and yet the completed spire fails to instill a sense of triumph in the Prioress, who is now consumed by emptiness and rage.

At the height of the plague, the prioress suffers a decisive blow. As the disease sweeps through nearby Waxelby, the convent’s priest deserts Oby to administer last rites among the dying, driven by a fearful urgency to prevent the peasants from confessing and shriving one another. Who will cater to the nuns’ spiritual needs? Almost simultaneously, a passing traveller, Ralph Kello, arrives seeking alms. He intends to stay only for the night, yet in the course of his brief refuge, he falsely claims to be a priest; his evident learning lends credibility to his deception, and the nuns accept him as such.

He was no priest, and he was here in a house of nuns, absolving the dying, saying mass. The absolutions were void, the rite was sacrilege. He was damning himself and abetting the damnation of others.

But the plague does not spare Ralph either. At the height of his illness, he raves in delirium that he is no priest, that he is damned. Dame Susanna, the convent’s infirmaress, hears his confession-laced murmurs, as does Ursula, a repentant nun. They outwardly dismiss them as the incoherent babblings of an afflicted man, yet in Dame Susanna’s mind a shadow of doubt takes root, one she has no means to confirm.

Sir Ralph thus settles into the convent as its priest for decades, quietly outliving the succession of prioresses who come and go. From time to time, he is assailed by thoughts of the ambition he never pursued, of the opportunities he might have seized had he stirred himself to act; yet inertia prevails, and he remains, year after year, rooted in the life of the convent.

Then there is Dame Johanna, a nun from Dilworth sent to Oby alongside Dame Alice after the Dilworth nunnery goes bankrupt. In her eager attempts to please, Johanna often irritates the other nuns, including the prioress. The prioress’s animosity towards Johanna intensifies when the spire collapses, and the convent contemplates legal action against the masons. When Dame Alicia dies, Johanna is unexpectedly elected prioress even if Dame Matilda is the favoured candidate.

After Johanna, drawing on her earlier experience at Oby as treasurer, Prioress Matilda manages the convent with her hallmark pragmatism, bolstered by the influence of her wealthy family connections. Matilda lacks the singular ambition of Prioress Alicia or her refined appreciation for beauty, and in that sense, she is perhaps unremarkable, yet she is competent and, more importantly to her, popular. During her tenure, Oby faces a scandal involving the priest Ralph as well as the murder of a nun – both matters Matilda chooses largely to ignore. She also contends with an austere, sanctimonious bishop who laments Oby’s shoddy bookkeeping and indulgent ways, appointing Henry Yellowlees as custos to oversee the convent finances.

Finally, there is Prioress Margaret, elected at an old age and known for her intransigence, whose tenure coincides with the Peasants’ Revolt in the book’s closing chapters. During her leadership, the carelessness of some nuns leads to the theft of valuable items from the convent, leaving a significant gap in Oby’s finances and forcing the nuns to resort to begging for alms.

Throughout the novel, many nuns come and go at Oby, but there are some who stand out more than the others. In the beginning, just before Alicia de Foley becomes prioress, we are told about Prioress Isabella and her fearful brand of tyranny in the convent. We meet Dame Susanna, the infirmaress, who is tormented by Ralph’s delirious claims of not being a priest but unable to confess it to anyone. Then there is Dame Lilias, a melancholic nun who envisages becoming an anchoress, living in isolation and cut off from the world after a saintly vision, but will her wish be granted? Dame Sibilla is installed at the convent at her uncle Bishop Walters’ behest, serving as his caregiver in his final days. Finally, there is Dame Adela, a scatterbrained descendant of Prioress Alicia, whose naiveté will cost the convent dearly later.

A RISING TOWER OF AMBITION

A convent, devoted to God and spiritual pursuits, would seem an unlikely arena for ambition, and yet Oby proves otherwise. Prioress Alicia’s spire embodies her singular purpose, and she remains steadfast in her determination to see it rise, even when circumstances threaten to crush her hopes. Labour shortages, poor workmanship, accidents, tragic deaths, and depleted finances do little to diminish her resolve. On the same plane, Ralph appears to be the antithesis of ambition, certainly in the earlier chapters, plagued by an emptiness and lack of direction, yet too powerless or complacent to act, surrendering instead to the comfortable rhythms of convent life. Ambition, however, resurfaces in subtler forms, particularly during the prioress elections later in the narrative, when several nuns come to see themselves as the rightful heirs to leadership, each driven by their own sense of entitlement and aspiration.

“I REALLY DO NOT SEE HOW WE CAN LIVE ON AIR”

One of the most striking aspects of the novel is how worldly and economic realities pervade convent life. The nuns are continually preoccupied with debts, dowries, rents from tenants, and the costs of daily survival.

While their spiritual aspirations remain central, these often collide with the practical demands of managing the convent. Prioresses Alicia and Matilda, in particular, must constantly navigate financial pressures – restoring the convent’s solvency, accepting novices whose substantial dowries help sustain the establishment, and seeking other sources of income. In this context, the role of treasuress becomes nearly as crucial as that of the prioress. Yet not all nuns are skilled in accounting, and over the years, bishops come to criticize the convent for indulgence and haphazard bookkeeping.

A CONVENT, A WORKPLACE

The Corner That Held Them often reads like a workplace novel, offering a lens through which we observe the inner workings of an institution. This is evident not only in the hierarchy of prioresses and other positions of authority among the nuns but also in the complex dynamics between them. Politics run rampant, as they do in any workplace, and the convent is rife with quarrels, rivalries, and subtle power plays. While the nuns are united in their pursuit of spiritual goals, they remain distinct individuals, each shaped by her own quirks, ambitions, and opinions. In one moment, Prioress Alicia harbours uncharitable thoughts about Dame Matilda, who much later will ascend to the position of prioress herself.

In 1345, when she first vowed her spire, Dame Matilda was a raw-boned stockish creature, very shy, and looking much younger than her real age. Time went on, and she became self-possessed, massive, even stately, all without appearing to make any especial effort and with no one taking any pains on her behalf. The spire was still unfinished. Why should the most prosaic of her nuns have grown as smoothly as Solomon’s temple while the spire lagged and pined like a rickety child? Because of this unfortunate association of ideas the prioress felt that somehow the one had grown at the expense of the other, that Dame Matilda was the spire’s rival, and her indifference to it charged with ill-will where the indifference of the other nuns was merely due to stupidity.

And yet on another occasion, they work seamlessly as partners, particularly when negotiating favourable terms on debt. Like in any institution, beyond interpersonal dynamics, the novel also traces the practical challenges of convent life: each prioress must navigate the demands of managing the community, securing income, and keeping expenses under control. More importantly, like any continuing institution, Oby persists through countless upheavals and constant change – new recruits arrive, nuns grow old and pass away, and the political landscape shifts, but the convent continues steadily onward.

WOMEN’S LIVES IN A PATRIARCHAL WORLD

Through a woman-centric lens, The Corner That Held Them portrays Oby as a convent with its own distinct personality, governed by women who navigate, negotiate, and at times resist the dictates of a patriarchal world. Early in the novel, for instance, the first prioress confronts the challenge of managing a convent hastily constructed with little thought for its future residents, devising practical strategies for survival and order. Later, when the condescending Bishop Walters reprimands the nuns for their perceived excesses, sending a scathing letter to the prioress and dispatching a custos to oversee their affairs, they unite in giving him the cold shoulder. Each prioress, in turn, shapes the convent according to her vision, constrained and informed by the resources at hand and the nuns who inhabit Oby. Within a world dominated by men, the convent emerges as a microcosm of female agency, a space where women govern and create life on their own terms.

Throughout, the nuns reflect on their roles, navigating the terrain between what they are taught and how they must adapt to a changing world – two forces that often diverge.

That was how one should manage: with bold strokes, with a policy that fitted the times. In these days a convent could not afford to turn its back on the world, spin its own wool and wear it, live on eggs and salad through the summer, sleep through the winter like a dormouse, and never receive a novice who had not three aunts and a cousin among the nuns.

‘Yet we are told to renounce the world,’ said Dame Susanna.

The nuns at Oby also reflect a generational divide, with differing outlooks, priorities, and ways of understanding their world.

Divided on a moral issue – the old nuns so naturally saying that one must be faithful to old ideas, and the younger nuns saying that one must live in the date where God has set one – the convent was preserved from lesser bickerings.

THE CRACKS AND CAMARADERIE OF COMMUNAL LIVING

The novel delves into the intricacies of life within a tightly knit community, one where personal tensions and conflicting opinions are laid bare, yet the nuns display a united front against unwelcome male authority. Later, the nuns discover a shared purpose through a collective needlework project – an engrossing task that allows them to set aside their differences and work together in quiet harmony.

THE INEXORABLE PASSAGE OF TIME

The Corner That Held Them is also a meditation on the passage of time. Years pass, nuns come and go, prioresses die, and new ones are elected, but convent life, like any institution, goes on. Much happens in the three decades STW covers – the old guard gives way to the new, the outer world rapidly evolves and transforms as do the fortunes of the convent – but the central preoccupations about governing and surviving essentially remain the same.

A SLICE OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

The Corner That Held Them is often categorized as a historical novel, but only in the sense that historical events provide the backdrop against which life at the convent unfolds; the story does not hinge on the presence of famous historical figures. The narrative is framed by the Black Death of 1349 at the beginning and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1382 at the end, with these aspects of history juxtaposed against and influencing the events that unfold specifically  at Oby – murder, sex, theft, kidnapping, accidents, deaths, and what have you. While the Black Death occupies only a small portion of the book, its effects reverberate throughout the convent, shaping both its personnel and its finances for years to come.

THE WIT AND VERVE OF WARNER’S WRITING

The Corner That Held Them eschews a conventional plot, unfolding instead as a tapestry of episodes and events spanning decades that offer intimate glimpses into convent life in medieval England.  There is no single dominant character here; the novel unfurls through a collective of characters, where the only constant is the convent. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s prose and narration is wonderfully absorbing; artful and meticulously constructed sentences that compel you to slow down and savour her masterful style while being wholly transported into another world. The richness of her writing is heightened by her impeccable comic timing, as she infuses the narrative with a delightfully dry and incisive wit that enlivens every scene.

Then Dame Cecilia began to have fits and to prophesy. This infuriated Richenda de Foley, to whom any talk of the end of the world after she had worked so hard and successfully to put the convent on a good footing for the next century seemed rank ingratitude.

Here’s another wonderful passage depicting Henry Yellowlees’ opinion on the Bishop who has appointed him as custos…

His spirits, sharpened by disliking the bishop as an appetite is sharpened by pickles, took an upward turn. He began to think well of a future in which he would clear up the usual nuns’ tangle at Oby and become Oby’s champion against that sanctimonious old gadfly.

By turns both bleak and funny, The Corner That Held Them is a fabulous novel about convent life spanning decades and centuries, filled with pestilence, politics, ambition, money, sex, and murder – nothing is off limits in STW’s striking, immersive world. Highly recommended!

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Stories for Winter and Nights by the Fire – Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Katherine Mansfield & more…

Published as part of the British Library Women Writers series, Stories for Winter and Nights by the Fire gathers a marvellous collection of winter-set stories.  Alongside established literary heavyweights – Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen, Shirley Jackson, and Katherine Mansfield – the volume also offers delightful discoveries in Violet M. MacDonald, Elizabeth Banks, and Angela Dickens.

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The collection opens with Edith Wharton’s “The Reckoning”, a superb exploration of an unconventional marriage and the quiet crisis brewing within a woman. Julia and Clement Westall enter matrimony on an agreement that they will not be bound by the conventional dictates of marriage; should either grow weary of the other, they would be free to part without bitterness or blame. It is Julia, scarred by the suffocating misery of her first marriage, who insists on these terms. Yet, as the years pass, Julia grows to cherish the harmony she shares with Clement, the comfort and companionship that gradually take root. And it is precisely then that the equilibrium begins to falter. Clement begins giving informal lectures on the nature of ‘modern marriage’, the very principles that shaped his own marriage to Julia, to an eager, youthful audience – particularly its women – and suddenly the ideals Julia once championed feel fraught and threatening. It is Julia, now, who experiences a shift in her feelings, but Clement might have other ideas.

The only necessary condition to a harmonious marriage was a frank recognition of this truth, and a solemn agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with themselves, and not to live together for a moment after complete accord had ceased to exist between them. The new adultery was unfaithfulness to self.

No writer renders loneliness with as much aching beauty and quiet devastation as Elizabeth Taylor, and “The Thames Spread Out” is a superb example – another of her stories focused on a middle-aged woman constrained by the boundaries of being a married man’s mistress. Rose has been seeing Gilbert for years, installed in a cottage by the river, a convenient detour for him when he is away from home.

By four o’clock she would be ready, and Gilbert, who was punctual over his illicit escapades as with everything else, would soon after drive down the lane. Perhaps escapade was altogether too exciting a word for the homely ways they had drifted into. She fussed over his little ailments far more than his wife had ever done, not because she loved him more, or indeed at all, but because her position was more precarious.

But on this particular winter weekend, Rose is relieved he won’t be coming. The river has risen, flooding its banks, transforming the neighbourhood into a “Thames-side Venice,” leaving her isolated in the house. At first, she is captivated by the pearly light on the still water and the tranquil seabirds, the surreal loveliness of the landscape. Gradually, though, the darkness closes in, and Rose is forced to confront the wretchedness of her situation – the dead-end reality of being tethered forever to the dull, dreary Gilbert.

Elizabeth Bowen’s “Ann Lee’s” is a strange, elusive tale about female friendship and class differences centred on two well-to-do friends – Mrs Dick Logan and Miss Ames – who venture to an out-of-the-way shop in search of hats. It is Miss Ames who suggests the shop, tucked away in a seedy quarter of London, and Mrs Logan, eager to find the perfect hat without spending enough to incur her husband’s disapproval, reluctantly agrees. Initially wary of Ann Lee herself, whose manner strikes her as cool and faintly condescending, Mrs Logan soon finds herself dazzled by the hats on display. But the atmosphere shifts dramatically when a sinister man enters, insisting he has an appointment with Miss Lee. His presence unsettles the women, who become increasingly distracted and uneasy as Miss Lee pointedly dismisses him, to little effect. His intentions remain unclear, until the story’s final moments when some clue does likely emerge.

A strikingly peculiar tale in the collection is Violet M. MacDonald’s “The Snowstorm,” set in the depths of winter and steeped in shimmering descriptions of snowbound roads and an icy, whitewashed landscape (“Now the map was white, with wavering lines of hedge and copse finely engraved upon it”). The story opens with a letter from a stranger to the protagonist, a woman, proposing that she accompany him to his old country house while his wife is away. In a flashback to the past, the woman remembers being unexpectedly captivated by this stranger she meets at an inn – a chance encounter that takes an uncanny turn when he writes to her. She is both alarmed and intrigued, but yields to the thrill of the adventure and what follows is a fleeting affair that throws in sharp relief an aching sense of loss and a yearning for things that could have been.

The weight of the hours in front of her drove at Elizabeth’s breast with the weight of years, as though in this interval before taking up her life again she must re-live all the years from her youth till now. She must re-endure the crash, the plunge into the world unripe, unready; the blundering search for some foothold, some steadying purpose; and then her late marriage and early widowhood, and the blanker loneliness that had ensued. It all pressed against her with a physical pain, as though the walls of a tunnel were falling in upon her.

Another excellent story exploring class difference and female insecurity is Katherine Mansfield’s “A Cup of Tea.” Its protagonist, Rosemary Fell, is a young, privileged woman who has been married for two years to a wealthy and indulgent husband. Though not conventionally beautiful, Rosemary more than compensates with her modern sensibility: she is well read, fashionably dressed, socially prominent, and keenly aware of her own youth. One cold, rain-soaked winter afternoon, after a shopping expedition, she encounters a destitute young woman who beseeches her for her cup of tea. Instead of offering money, Rosemary impulsively invites the girl home, taking pleasure in the ritual of feeding her, laying out an elaborate tea, and basking in the warmth and luxury of her own surroundings. Yet, there’s a sense that Rosemary’s generosity is more performative than genuine, more about flattering her own self-image. Soon after, her husband casually remarks on the girl’s beauty, and Rosemary feels threatened.

Ghosts surface in Angela Dickens’s “My Fellow Travellers”, a story-within-a-story in which an older, erudite woman recalls a strange and unsettling train journey from several years earlier. The disturbing presence of a domineering man and a troubled woman in her compartment builds towards an incident that may amount to murder, while in Elizabeth Bibesco’s “A Motor”, a particular make of motorcar becomes the lens through which two separate failed relationships are examined.

There’s subtle comedy too particularly in Shirley Jackson’s “My Life with R.H. Macy” and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “The Cold”. Jackson’s story is a satire on the experiences of a newly hired department-store employee whose brief tenure lasts only two days. Warner’s story brims with her characteristic dry wit: a stubborn cold sweeps through an English household, exhausting everyone in its wake, until the lady of the house is confronted with an unthinkable blow – her long-serving, loyal maid announces her intention to leave, worn down by relentless caregiving and falling ill herself.  

As its title implies, most of the stories unfold in winter – across dreary afternoons or under the persistent chill of winter rains or as seen in Angela Carter’s “The Smile of Winter” at a desolate seaside where “the glittering sun transfigures everything so brilliantly that the beach looks like a desert and the ocean like a mirage.” A few are truly steeped in snow and ice, most notably “The Snowstorm,” which is rich with arresting imagery of a world blanketed in white.

The head-lights of the car threw two white shafts into space, and the wind-screen wiper clicked steadily back and forth, clearing the fine dust of snow from the glass as it drove and drove against it ceaselessly. The world seemed dissolving under the gentle, insistent action of the snow, that was seen to be twisting in slow spirals across the light.

In my part of the world, December brings neither snow nor frost nor ice; the days are cool but agreeable, and this collection nonetheless felt perfectly attuned to the season. Across stories spanning the 1910s to the 1950s, we encounter wronged women and jealous wives, lonely mistresses and flustered friends, distressed maids and dissatisfied employees. Exploring themes of loneliness, fractured marriages, class divisions, grief and loss, self-discovery, chance encounters, and life-altering revelations, Stories for Winter and Nights by the Fire proved a superb way to close out 2025.

This is, after all, the season of abandonment, of the suspension of vitality, a long cessation of vigour in which we must cultivate our stoicism. Everything has put on the desolate smile of winter.

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Authoritarianism & Resistance: Ten Excellent Books

Here’s a new themed post from me, the first in 2026 – “Authoritarianism and Resistance.” A theme that seems apt given the fraught times we live in, as authoritarian governments chip away at people’s freedoms and rights, and right-wing propaganda muddies reality.

However, this is also about resistance, as the following ten remarkable books will demonstrate – it is about humanity, individual courage, resistance against erasure, and the demand for truth, while highlighting the atrocities of war and horrific acts of genocide through the medium of literature and history.

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THE TWILIGHT ZONE by Nona Fernández (Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer)

Using the motif of the 1950s popular science fiction/fantasy show The Twilight Zone, Fernández delves into the unimaginable spaces of horror, violence, and murkiness of the cruel Pinochet regime where beatings, torture, and unexplained disappearances disturbingly became a part of the fabric of everyday life.

In March 1984, Andres Morales, a government security services agent, labeled by our narrator as “the man who tortured people” walks into the offices of the “Cauce” magazine and offers his testimony in exchange for safe passage outside the country. After years of imposing torture tactics on Pinochet’s detractors – members of the Communist party, resistance movements, and left-leaning individuals -something inside Morales snaps (“That night I started to dream of rats. Of dark rooms and rats”). Possibly aghast at the monstrosity of the crimes committed, Morales wishes to confess and in the process hopes to be absolved of those horrific acts.

Much of the book highlights crucial moral questions at play, and the fate of the man who tortured people is central to it – Should he be absolved of his crimes because he had a change of heart and now wants to do right? It’s a powerful, unforgettable book about loss, repression, and rebellion where the premise of the TV show is used to brilliant effect – an exploration of that dark dimension where strangeness and terror rule the roost, and is often unfathomable.

LIFE AND FATE by Vasily Grossman (Translated from Russian by Robert Chandler)

A wonderful, wonderful book, big on ideas, set at the heart of World War Two during the historic Battle of Stalingrad. The cast of characters is huge and at the end of this gargantuan novel is a list running into several pages.  The Shaposhnikov family’s story forms the nucleus of Life and Fate, but Grossman does not focus his lens on them alone. A slew of subplots radiate from the central story arc, and the main characters in most of these subplots are connected in some way or the other to the Shaposhnikov family.

These subplots are pretty wide ranging in terms of setting and scope adding layers of richness to the novel – we are privy to the lives and viewpoints of people engaged in combat on the battlefields (the tank corps, air force and soldiers), the grimness of Jewish ghettoes, the horrific, fatalistic journey to the gas chambers, political prisoners stationed in Siberian camps, a Stalingrad power station, an isolated Russian outpost called House 6/1 surrounded by Germans and led by the irreverent Grekov who refuses to send reports to his superiors, the surrealism of the vast Kalmyk Steppes, the Kafkaesque nature of the Lubyanka prison and so on.

But the throbbing pulse of Life and Fate lies in its unwavering focus on humanity and generosity, its examination of the complexities of human nature, and its persistent moral questioning.

THE OPPERMANNS by Lion Feuchtwanger (Translated from German by James Cleugh, revisions by Joshua Cohen)

Lion Feuchtwanger’s The Oppermanns is a haunting, powerful story charting the rise and fall of a rich, cultured, liberal German Jew family during the years leading up to and during Hitler’s rise to power. The author takes his time setting up his cast of characters while simultaneously juxtaposing their situation with the broader grim political developments sweeping throughout the country making it an incredibly immersive read right from the very beginning.

The Oppermanns comprise the three brothers – Martin, Edgar, Gustav, and their sister Klara, married to the East European Jew Jaques Lavendel who is an American citizen but chooses to live in Germany. Established in Berlin, the family’s furniture venture is largely run and managed by Martin. Edgar is an eminent and respected doctor with a thriving practice of his own, while Gustav, the eldest brother, is relatively naïve and sentimental; a man of letters, Gustav is absorbed with his world of books and writing a biography on Lessing, fine dining and women, while oblivious and uninterested in matters concerning politics or economics.

As the Nazis come into power, the Oppermanns are shocked by the scale of the country’s moral breakdown while also unable to fathom the precariousness of their existence in this dramatically altered landscape of their homeland. In this volatile situation, the three brothers are faced with a terrible dilemma – should they flee Germany, or should they stay back?

CROOKED CROSS by Sally Carson

One of the most striking aspects of Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross is that she wrote it while events in Germany were still unfolding – as Hitler and the Nazi Party were rapidly ascending to power. Published in 1934 and set in a Bavarian village near Munich, Crooked Cross traces the rise of Nazism and fascism through the experiences of a single German family and the devastating effects these political upheavals have on their lives. In particular, the novel offers a brilliant exploration of how Germany’s youth were drawn into Hitler’s orbit, how the Nazi party preyed on their insecurities and frustrations, and how those emotions were harnessed to expand the party’s reach, power, and ideological hold.

Crooked Cross opens quietly on Christmas Eve, 1932, in the snow-blanketed village of Kranach – a time of bitter winter chill, yet also of festive warmth, family gatherings, and the promise of coziness and comfort. At the heart of the story is the Kluger family: Hans and Frau Kluger, and their three children. The eldest, Helmy, is a serious, awkward young man; Lexa, the middle child, is independent and free-spirited; and the youngest, Erich, is loud, mischievous, and prone to mockery. Then there is Moritz Weissmann, Lexa’s fiancé. A talented Jewish doctor with a bright future, Moritz has deliberately turned down lucrative positions to work at a clinic in Munich, honouring his father’s wishes. Moritz and Lexa are well matched in temperament and values and are deeply in love.

Soon, the political landscape in Germany begins to rapidly change. Hitler rises to power, and the country’s moral fabric begins to fray. Hitherto unemployed, Helmy and Erich join the Party and find a renewed sense of purpose that makes the family happy. However, the discrimination towards Jews begins, and Moritz starts feeling the heat. He is abruptly dismissed from the clinic without explanation, casting a shadow over his and Lexa’s shared future. In this fraught and turbulent landscape, Lexa emerges as the novel’s moral compass, the axis around which the fates of her family, friends, and Moritz revolve. Carson’s rendering of the moral dilemma confronting Lexa is superbly done; she must decide between her love for Moritz (and hence her loyalty to him) and her loyalty to her family and their shifting allegiances.

WAR IN VAL d’ORCIA: AN ITALIAN WAR DIARY 1943-1944 by Iris Origo

Encompassing a period of one year, War in Val D’Orcia covers events between January 1943 and July 1944; an extremely difficult period for war-ravaged Italy fuelled by the intensity of the conflict and utter chaos in its political landscape. The author, Iris Origo, was an Anglo-American married to an Italian, and much before the war the couple bought and revived a derelict stretch of the Val d’Orcia valley in Tuscany and created an estate. At the height of the war, and at great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and refugees.

War in Val D’Orcia is a first-hand account of the complexity of Italy’s position, the politics prevailing at the time, and the difficulty of going about daily life. A compelling narrative laced with heart-stopping tension, these diary entries lose none of their edge even if we as readers already know how events will eventually pan out…the fact is that Iris Origo at the time did not; thus, the potency of the fear and stress felt by the Origos rubs on to the reader as well.

LIFE WITH A STAR by Jiří Weil (Translated from Czech by Rita Klímová with Roslyn Schloss)

Posthumously published in Czechoslovakia in 1964 (Weil died of cancer in 1959), Life with a Star is a brilliant, heartbreaking novel with its portrayal of Jewish life under Nazi occupation. Viewed through the lens of its protagonist and narrator, Josef Roubicek, the novel dwells on the themes of death, oppression, and cruelty, as well as the meaning of life and the glimmers of hope that persist even in the face of despair.

When the novel opens, Josef Roubicek, a single, orphaned, Jewish man, is having an imaginary conversation with Ruzena, the love of his life, whom he has probably lost forever. These imaginary conversations are vital to Josef’s sanity given the grimness of his existence. He lives in a borrowed, crumbling flat, stripped of comfort. The harsh winter seeps into his bones; damp stains on the walls creep ever larger; food is scarce, and he is persistently assailed by pangs of hunger. As the anti-Jewish laws in the city intensify, Josef’s world shrinks further. Certain streets and alleyways become forbidden to him; on trains, he is confined to the last carriage; on overcrowded streetcars, he can be thrown out at a moment’s notice. Yet unlike some of his wealthier Jewish compatriots, Josef has no valuables to be seized, no cherished possessions to mourn. And yet, despite having nothing to treasure other than his memories, Josef clings to survival, to hope, to the mere act of carrying on.

One of the novel’s most striking elements is that nowhere does it explicitly mention the oppressors as Nazis or Germans. Instead, they are simply they, them – a choice that renders the novel eerily universal, as if applicable to any era of oppression. What also stands out is the tone of the novel laced with black humour, irony, and Kafkaesque absurdity, as Josef finds himself at the mercy of nonsensical and arbitrary rules that govern his life and that of his fellowmen. But more than anything, what shines through in Life with a Star is Josef Roubicek’s unshowy yet singular personality and quiet dignity, his will to somehow survive (even though for the larger part of the novel he isn’t sure how), and cling to the smallest things that give him meaning in a world that has lost all meaning. 

MINOR DETAIL by Adania Shibli (Translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette)

Minor Detail is an intense, searing novella of war, violence, memory and erasure at the heart of which lies the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The novella is divided into two sections. The first part focuses on an Israeli patrol and the events leading upto the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl. In the second part, the narration is in the first person, by an unnamed Palestinian woman residing in present, modern-day Ramallah and the perilous journey she embarks on in her quest to find the truth of that atrocity long forgotten.  The novella, then, is a piercing meditation on the tragedy faced by war victims – individuals whose lives are deemed trivial and inconsequential and are lost somewhere in the wider sweep of history.

RECOGNISING THE STRANGER: ON PALESTINE AND NARRATIVE by Isabella Hammad  

It is fair to say that most of us have read certain books where not much makes sense in the beginning but as the story unfolds, as the threads unravel, as the various fragments morph into a coherent whole, things start clicking into place. We have that “a-ha” moment – where the gist or the point of the narrative suddenly becomes clear.

This is one of the central points that Isabella Hammad makes in her powerful, stunningly written book Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative. The book explores the middle of narratives, the turning points in history, the recognition or “a-ha” moments in narratives, and the novel as a powerful form of expression, placed within the context of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

At barely 80 pages, the book comprises two sections – the first is the text of a lecture Hammad originally delivered on 28 September 2023 at Columbia University, nine days before 7 October 2023, while the second section is an afterward Hammad wrote in the early weeks of 2024. Both texts are erudite, revelatory, and poignant infused with the clarity of thought that sheds light on the plight of Palestine. An extraordinary book, I would urge you to read it – its brevity means that you can read it in a day, but the profundity of its themes will resonate for a long time.

WE DO NOT PART by Han Kang (Translated from Korean by E. Yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris)

Han Kang’s We Do Not Part is a beautifully written, haunting, dreamlike novel of friendship, trauma, and bearing witness to state violence, particularly centred on the Jeju massacre in 1948-49.

Divided into three parts – Bird, Night, and Flame – the book begins with a recurring dream that has haunted one of the protagonists, Kyungha, for four years, ever since she immersed herself in research for her book on the G— massacre. Now with the book completed, Kyungha is adrift, her body wracked by migraines, her nights shattered by insomnia, her dreams filled with foreboding imagery.  Estranged from her family and living in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Seoul, one day out of the blue, she receives a text from Inseon, an old friend and former colleague from her past.

Inseon left Seoul a decade ago to care for her mother on Jeju Island, abandoning her career as a photographer and video artist for woodworking. A terrible accident in her workshop results in two of her fingers being severed, and she ends up in the hospital. Inseon has urgently summoned Kyungha for a reason. She pleads with Kyungha to go and take care of her pet bird, Ama, who needs to be fed on time; otherwise, she won’t survive, and Kyungha accepts. But Kyungha gets caught up in a blizzard, and when she does reach Inseon’s house, there’s a power outage. Shrouded in darkness and flickering candlelight, the surreal night stretches on as Inseon’s tragic family history gradually unfolds before Kyungha, along with the reasons behind her move to Jeju. Melancholic and dreamlike, Han Kang’s novel inhabits the liminal space between life and death, its narrative suffused with her spare, quiet, and restrained prose. 

SOFIA PETROVNA by Lydia Chukovskaya (Translated from Russian by Aline Werth)

Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna is set in Leningrad during the 1930s, the height of Stalin’s Great Purge. The titular character, Sofia Petrovna Lipatova, is a middle-aged widow and typist working in a publishing house. Sofia is proud of her son, Kolya, an intelligent, dutiful engineering student destined for success. In the publishing house where she works, she earns her position and the respect of her colleagues. Like many Soviet citizens of the time, she believes in Stalin and the justness of Soviet society.

Gradually, though, the atmosphere changes. Friends and colleagues are denounced, arrested, and disappear without explanation. Rumours spread of sabotage, espionage, and ‘enemies of the people.’ At first, Sofia Petrovna rationalizes these events, convinced that innocent people could not be punished and that the arrests must be justified. But when her beloved son Kolya is suddenly arrested and accused of counter-revolutionary activity, Sofia Petrovna’s secure worldview is shattered. She cannot comprehend how the state she trusted could accuse Kolya, a loyal and gifted young man.

This slim novella is devastating in its depiction of Sofia’s plight from initial bewilderment at her son’s arrest, to hopes of his release, to isolation and utter despair. It shows how the terror of the Stalin authoritarian regime invaded private lives, eroded trust, and turned loyal Soviet citizens into ‘enemies’ overnight.

Posted on by Radz Pandit · 4 Comments

2025: A Year of Reading in Pictures

This is my last piece in 2025 where I let pictures do all the talking. This minimalist post is a photo-feature highlighting all the books I read during the year. Of these, the ones I loved the most found a place on My Best Books of 2025 list that I published in mid-December.

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So without much ado, here are all the books I read in 2025…I have written monthly posts on them too, should you want to read the mini write-ups or detailed reviews.

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A Year of Reading in Pictures (backlist): 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Cheers and Wishing you a Happy New Year,

Radhika (Radz Pandit)

Posted on by Radz Pandit · 2 Comments

A Month of Reading – December 2025

I read some excellent books in December – four in total and an ongoing read – one of which found a place on My Best Books of 2025 list, while another one featured in ‘Honourable Mentions’ and was part of the “NYRBWomen25” readalong. Of the remaining three, two are short story collections (I completed one, and am still reading the other, so it will become a bridge book in a way), and one is a short story released by Galley Beggar Press as a mini book as part of its “Pocket Ghosts” series.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief look at the books…You can read the detailed reviews on the first two by clicking on the title links.

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THERE’S NO TURNING BACK by Alba de Céspedes (Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein)

Alba de Céspedes’ There’s No Turning Back is a character-driven, richly woven tale of womanhood and female friendship, chronicling the intricate lives of women in early 20th-century Italy. The novel is set in Rome, in a convent-style women’s residence called Grimaldi, run by nuns. The young women who board there come from varied backgrounds: some are privileged, while others are far less so; some reside there to pursue their studies, while others seek refuge from the scent of a scandal. The central focus of the novel, however, is a group of eight women in their early twenties, each marked by a distinct personal history.

For the eight women – Silvia, Emanuela, Xenia, Anna, Valentina, Augusta, Vinca, and Milly – the Grimaldi is the starting point, the hub from which their lives radiate in diverse directions. Within its walls, they are first friends and students, equals bound by the rhythms of convent life. Yet as the novel unfolds, each woman follows a distinct path, shaped either by her own choices to a limited extent or by circumstances over which she doesn’t always have control. The early chapters shimmer with their camaraderie – the playful banter, late-night gatherings, séances, and candid conversations about men, ambitions, and family. Over time, however, their lives deviate from what they expected, and each must come to terms with the consequences of the decisions they make.

Smart and perceptive, There’s No Turning Back thrums with Alba de Céspedes’ elegant and incisive writing style. At the time of its publication, the novel was considered experimental and revolutionary for its portrayal of feminism and womanhood, defying the conventional norms of literature and society, and therefore censored by Mussolini’s fascist regime.

MEMORIES: FROM MOSCOW TO THE BLACK SEA by Teffi (Translated from Russian by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg)

I adored Teffi’s Other Worlds, a collection of stories I read last year, and was very keen to read more of her work. “NYRBWomen25” was the perfect opportunity to do so, and what a brilliant book this turned out to be! Teffi’s Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a memoir Teffi wrote in exile, wonderfully evoking the lightness, irony, wit, and emotional restraint that define her voice. Though often humorous and farcical on the surface, the book is a haunting, frightening, sad, and unsettling account of the tumultuous days following the Russian Revolution and Civil War, told through the eyes of a writer watching her world disintegrate in ways that are, by turns, absurd, tragic, and terrifying.

The memoir chronicles Teffi’s journey out of revolutionary Russia between 1918 and 1919, as it opens in Moscow, with news of the Russian Word shutting down and her “life in Petersburg liquidated.” An opportunity to give public readings in Kiev and Odessa arises, offered through the dubious impresario Gooskin, whose strange accent and slippery manner make him an almost comical figure, and Teffi accepts. But as the Bolsheviks’ reign of terror spreads across cities and towns, Teffi finds herself moving from Kiev to Odessa, and then to the dismal port of Novorossiysk, before finally embarking for Constantinople. While Teffi narrates the broader arc of her journey in a linear fashion, within the time spent in each place, she relies on an episodic style of storytelling – vignettes, encounters, and sharp observations – that mirrors the chaos of the era and the fragmentation of the lives around her.

Rather than dwell on the bigger political picture, Teffi focuses on small details, on the everyday rhythms and disrupted lives of the ordinary people she meets, as well as friends and acquaintances caught in the same tide. She conveys the fear, uncertainty, and aching sense of loss that grips them as they are uprooted from their homeland, unsure whether they will ever return. The memoir’s brilliance lies in this blend of farce and horror; Teffi can be funny despite the terror and tragedy all around as she flees from Moscow to the Black Sea.

STORIES FOR WINTER AND NIGHTS BY THE FIRE by Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Katherine Mansfield & more…

Published as part of the British Library Women Writers series, this anthology gathers a marvellous collection of winter-set stories.  Alongside established literary heavyweights – Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen, Shirley Jackson, and Katherine Mansfield – the volume also offers delightful discoveries in Violet M. MacDonald, Elizabeth Banks, and Angela Dickens.

The collection opens with Edith Wharton’s “The Reckoning”, a superb exploration of an unconventional marriage and the quiet crisis brewing within a woman. Julia and Clement Westall enter matrimony on an agreement that they will not be bound by the conventional dictates of marriage; should either grow weary of the other, they would be free to part without bitterness or blame. It is Julia, scarred by the suffocating misery of her first marriage, who insists on these terms. Yet, as the years pass, Julia grows to cherish the harmony she shares with Clement, the comfort and companionship that gradually take root. And it is precisely then that the equilibrium begins to falter. Clement begins giving informal lectures on the nature of ‘modern marriage’, the very principles that shaped his own marriage to Julia, to an eager, youthful audience – particularly its women – and suddenly the ideals Julia once championed feel fraught and threatening. It is Julia, now, who experiences a shift in her feelings, but Clement might have other ideas.

No writer renders loneliness with as much aching beauty and quiet devastation as Elizabeth Taylor, and “The Thames Spread Out” is a superb example – another of her stories focused on a middle-aged woman constrained by the boundaries of being a married man’s mistress. Rose has been seeing Gilbert for years, installed in a cottage by the river, a convenient detour for him when he is away from home. But on this particular winter weekend, Rose is relieved he won’t be coming. The river has risen, flooding its banks, transforming the neighbourhood into a “Thames-side Venice,” leaving her isolated in the house. At first, she is captivated by the pearly light on the still water and the tranquil seabirds, the surreal loveliness of the landscape. Gradually, though, the darkness closes in, and Rose is forced to confront the wretchedness of her situation – the dead-end reality of being tethered forever to the dull, dreary Gilbert.

Elizabeth Bowen’s “Ann Lee’s” is a strange, elusive tale centred on two well-to-do friends – Mrs Dick Logan and Miss Ames – who venture to an out-of-the-way shop in search of hats. It is Miss Ames who suggests the shop, tucked away in a seedy quarter of London, and Mrs Logan, eager to find the perfect hat without spending enough to incur her husband’s disapproval, reluctantly agrees. Initially wary of Ann Lee herself, whose manner strikes her as cool and faintly condescending, Mrs Logan soon finds herself dazzled by the hats on display. But the atmosphere shifts dramatically when a sinister man enters, insisting he has an appointment with Miss Lee. His presence unsettles the women, who become increasingly distracted and uneasy as Miss Lee pointedly dismisses him, to little effect. His intentions remain unclear, until the story’s final moments when some clue does likely emerge.

Another strikingly peculiar tale is Violet M. MacDonald’s “The Snowstorm,” set in the depths of winter and steeped in shimmering descriptions of snowbound roads and an icy, whitewashed landscape. Its protagonist, a woman travelling alone, finds herself unexpectedly captivated by a stranger she meets at an inn – a chance encounter that soon takes an uncanny turn. He later writes to her, proposing that she accompany him to his old country house while his wife is away. She is both alarmed and intrigued, but yields to the thrill of the adventure and what follows is a fleeting affair that throws in sharp relief an aching sense of loss and a yearning for things that could have been.

Embracing themes of loneliness, fractured marriages, class divides, self-discovery, and life-altering revelations, this collection was a superb way to close out the year.  

THE SIGNALMAN by Charles Dickens

I had read two books from the Pocket Ghosts series last year – stories by Elizabeth Gaskell and Muriel Spark, and decided this was the perfect time to read the last of the lot, Charles Dicken’s The Signalman. In this story, our narrator recounts his first encounter with the signalman, calling him out with the words, “Halloa! Below There”, words that the signalman finds greatly disconcerting. There is, as he soon reveals, a troubling reason for this reaction. At first, he regards the narrator with palpable fear, and the narrator tries to put him at ease. Once reassured, the signalman welcomes the narrator into his little cabin, and begins to speak.

He recounts how he is haunted by a recurring spectre, glimpsed by the red light at the tunnel entrance on separate occasions, each appearance preceding a tragedy. The first time, the signalman saw a figure with its left arm shielding its face, while the other arm waved in desperate warning, echoing the very words the narrator had spoken. When he questioned it about the danger it seemed to warn about, the figure vanished, but hours later, a horrific train crash occurred, claiming many lives. Months later, the spectre appeared again, this time silent, with both hands covering its face, foreshadowing another calamity: the death of a young, beautiful woman on a passing train. Gradually, the apparitions become more frequent, leaving the signalman gripped by fear and mounting anxiety. What exactly is the spectre trying to convey, and is there anything he can do to prevent the tragedies that follow?

This is a very good spooky tale and Dickens is wonderful at creating mood and atmosphere, particularly in the beginning of the story where he evocatively depicts the desolate, oppressive air that permeates the railway cutting…

“His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.”

BRIDGE BOOK

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GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY (from COMPLETE GHOST STORIES) by M.R. James

I started this collection in the last week of December and will continue reading it in January, so this is a bridge book in that sense. The first twelve stories in this are from his collection called Ghost Stories of An Antiquary of which I’ve read three so far. I will put up a detailed review in January after completing the collection, but meanwhile, here are some rough thoughts…

“Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” – A strange cathedral, an oppressed, nervous sacristan, a canon’s scrap-book filled with ancient manuscripts and a terrifying sepia drawing. I’m not sure I grasped the biblical references, but the story was great for the uncanny atmosphere and a creeping sense of dread.

“Lost Hearts” – This was such a great story, unsettling and atmospheric, centred on an eleven-year-old boy, newly orphaned, and his older cousin – a professor and a recluse. Ghosts are present, yes, but so is human evil.

“The Mezzotint” – In this captivating tale, we meet Mr Williams, a curator at a university museum, who receives what at first seems a rather unremarkable mezzotint of an English manor, devoid of figures, quoted by an art dealer at a bafflingly high price. Yet when he shows it to friends, he is startled to discover that they perceive figures he had overlooked, including a grotesque, muffled form lurking at the edge. That night, Williams witnesses the print’s image begin to change: a shadowy figure in black crawls across the lawn toward the house. Realizing the mystery demands deeper inquiry, he resolves to investigate the identity of the manor and the history of its inhabitants, seeking to uncover the secret behind the mezzotint’s eerie transformations. Another great story that dwells on the themes of revenge, missing heirs, the aura of historical places, supernatural forces, and death.

That’s it for December. I’ll put up my last post later today (a photo feature of the books I read this year). 2025 has been rich in terms of reading and I hope that streak continues in 2026 too!