This is a very strange — and to me, sad — book. It was Morchiladze’s first novel, published in 1992, and describes the journey of two young men from Tbilisi to Armenia. As Georgia began…

British historian Dick Geary, who passed away last year, apologised several times in the course of this short book for not being able to go into any detail. That’s because the book was a part…

Most books I’ve seen about “life extension” and immortality are written by advocates of various ways of living much longer, or even forever. These include Ray Kurzweil, the noted tech guru, and Dave Asprey, the…

It’s said that when he died, Lenin left behind a library in which the largest number of books were written by himself — but the second largest group were books written by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky…

I read lots of books about health, obesity, diet and nutrition. I learn something from almost all of them. Even the most useless of them will contain one or two new insights, or sometimes ideas…

I’m probably wrong about this, but I think the trend of writing police procedurals set in totalitarian societies started with Martin Cruz Smith, whose Gorky Park was published back in 1981. Since then there have…

This short book is a brilliant book. Many of the books I read are quite predictable, and that is one of the reasons why I read them. If I read a thriller or crime fiction,…

On page 74 of this book, a character is described as “a Service legend, in her way. Not a bona fide legend like your Jackson Lambs – the plural uncalled for, because there was only…

One reviewer described this book as “‘Inglorious Basterds’ but much better”. I don’t buy that at all. This is not, in any sense, based upon or linked to Tarantino’s brilliant film. Instead, it’s the true…