Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi

I was really impressed by this book. It's a wonderfully written tale, between the fantastic / surrealistic and the factual depiction of a war torn city, where the surreal of the imagination blends smoothly with the surreal of life under those conditions, creating an atmosphere simultaneously dreamlike and starkly real. Adding to that masterly storytelling a touch of dark humour, the author creates a true masterpiece.

The human capacity to live under extreme circumstances always fascinates me, and it is extremely vivid in this book. I'm also always interested in reading about the present events and realities of the Middle Eastern turmoils, told by people who experience them, instead of the black-and-white pictures the news convey us. So, this book is one of several about this subject that I've greatly appreciated in the last year: Guapa, The City Always Wins, The Queue.

A beautiful, moving and disturbing book, I highly recommend it.

Mémoires de La Rochefoucauld

I first became acquainted with the duke de La Rochefoucauld through the books of Alexandre Dumas - La Guerre des Femmes and the Trois Mousquetaires series. These books, that I read in childhood, left me an indelible taste for everything regarding the Fronde and its troubles - later I read the Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, du cardinal de Retz, and there were still lots of references to that troubled period in Saint-Simon. So I guess it was just a matter of time until I read La Rochefoucauld. And I'm glad I did - the language is extremely elegant - and how I love that archaic French! - and the narrative reads like a Dumas novel - actually, it was from this book that Dumas took the idea for the diamonds jewels in Les Trois Mousquetaires. Never boring, it is extremely interesting in the way it shows how politics was done in those days, the Nobility privileges and what they considered their God-given rights, and all the petty intrigues that determined such important and fateful events as a Civil war. It sounds simultaneously familiar and remotely romantic.

I wonder what will be the next book I'll read about the Grand Siècle?

The Sparsholt Affair, by Alan Hollinghurst

Years ago, I loved The Line of Beauty, and then read Alan Hollinghurst's previous books and liked them extremely, especially The Swimming Pool Library and The Folding Star. Later, The Stranger's Child was a disappointment, and now I was curious about his latest book, The Sparsholt Affair.

I was glad it is a much better book than The Stranger's Child, but it still felt like a somehow failed book. It reminded me of Virginia Woolf's The Years - a good read, a clever period piece, elegantly written, but somewhat weak, falling short of the author's capacity, failing to achieve that sense of "yes, this is it" that a truly great book does, it leaves us with the feeling that its point was not quite made.

But it's still a good book, so I guess I'll wait for Hollinghurst's next work and read it.

A nice holiday in Portugal, Spain and Paris

I usually consider a holiday to be truly fulfilling when I leave my familiar surroundings, travel some place I've never been to, discover new sights (and, if I'm lucky, new people). But sometimes it feels just as good to revisit familiar places, especially in good company - the joy of seeing and experiencing again can be just as good as the pleasure of seeing anew. And that's what I did this time, the occasion was a visit from a dear Aussie friend - - someone who showed me his country in two fantastic and unforgettable roadtrips (and whose acquaintance is one of the many reasons I'll always be grateful to Facebook), and to whom I looked forward to share some of my Europe with.

So I started by playing the tourist in Lisbon, something I rarely do, numbed by the familiarity of driving through it every day. But it is really a beautiful city, especially under the clear spring light - the red roofs, the cobblestone streets, the lively squares with café terraces, the Baixa, Chiado, Belém, etc. And of course the tasty food and wine. I felt happy walking around my city, showing famous sights like Jerónimos, the Belém tower, the castle hill, the belvedere in Graça, the Gulbenkian museum, the modern architecture at the Expo 98 site - they have become very (sometimes too) touristic, but there are good reasons for that. I dislike the tacky shops that are taking over the Baixa and the crowds in Belém, but it's still a remarkable city, and I was proud of it.

The weather was beautiful, and then I showed him the Cascais line, Guincho, Azenhas-do-Mar and the Capuchos convent in Sintra; another day was spent visiting Cabo Espichel, Sesimbra and the Arrábida, where we had a great fish lunch at Portinho.

My friend is a great admirer of Islamic architecture (and a keen fan of Game of Thrones) so then we went on a roadtrip to Andalusia. We stopped in Évora, Monsaraz and the Alqueva, gloriously beautiful in spring, and stayed at Seville, where we visited the town and the Alcazar, the shooting place of Dorne in Game of Thrones. Ate a lot of calamares and oxtail, and enjoyed the lively sevillian street life.

From Seville we went to Granada, one of my favourite Spanish cities. The Albaicin, the walk by the Darro, the Alhambra at sunset, everything was as beautiful as I remembered it from my visit exactly 10 years ago. I hadn't visited the Realejo, the old Jewish quarter, before, and it was a joy to walk up its narrow and winding stairs.

After Granada, Cordoba. The city is beautiful, and the Great Mosque one of the most amazing buildings I ever saw, with its forest of columns and its unique bending of styles - Roman columns supporting Islamic arches and then Gothic reliefs. And we got a treat of a contest of Flamenco dances by young people at the Plaza de las Tendillas, lots of fun.

Near Cordoba, we visited the castle of Almodóvar del Rio, Highgarden in Game of Thrones, a restored castle overlooking a beautiful Spanish landscape.

Then back to Portugal, driving by beautiful olive groves and vineyards. A visit to Sintra, the amazing National Palace (probably my favourite Portuguese palace) and the Quinta da Regaleira, an early 20th century folly with lovely gardens and the romantic well.

To end the holidays, nothing could be better than a few days in Paris, in a glorious spring weather. We stayed at he Marais, one of my favourite Parisian neighbourhoods, and walked miles and miles - along the Rive Gauche (Saint-Germain-des-Prés, etc), the Champs-Elysées, the Île Saint-Louis. I love Paris, and never get tired of it.

We visited the Musée Picasso, that had fascinated me some 20 years ago. It has been extensively renovated since, and I missed many of his '20s paintings and the Las Niñas studies that I had so much admired then, but I guess they haven't enough space to show their whole collection, and there was a very good exhibition about the Guernica.

Paris, Granada, Cordoba, Seville. Lisbon... and good company. Can one ask for something better?

Sleep Demons, an Insomniac Memoir, by Bill Hayes

Another very good book by Bill Hayes. I particularly love how he weaves his memoirs along with the depictions of sleep disturbances. And how moving and engaging his memoirs of the AIDS epidemic are. As is the narrative of his coming to terms with his sexuality and his life. And his writing is extremely elegant and intelligent. I highly recommend his books.

Albertine Disparue, par Marcel Proust

I enjoy so much rereading Proust, he's the best writer EVER. So insightful and clever, in the most beautiful and elegant prose. Albertine is the perfect embodiment of an object of desire and longing, and the author's depiction of mourning is just perfect. And then there are all the other perfect scenes, from the article in the Figaro to the gossip and considerations about the society weddings and homosexual husbands.

Proust is definitely the author whose books I would take to that desert island.

Rubicon, by Tom Holland

I always loved History, and always had a particularly soft spot for Ancient History - first through a fascination with archaeology, then the Greek myths, then the exciting perversity of the TV series I, Claudius, and so on. Later I read Suetonius, Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Edward Gibbon, and I still love to get my hands on a good book about Roman history; fortunately there are still people writing them. I enjoyed Tom Holland's Dynasty, so I now read this one, and it's also very good. Holland writes History like a novelist, sometimes like a thriller writer, and his books are a pleasure to read. What fiction drama could be more fetching than the turbulent last century of the Roman Republic? It would take a really imaginative mind to invent such characters and plot. From the Gracchi to Augustus, it's hard to imagine a more remarkable set of people, like Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Clodius, Antony, Cleopatra. Some people can say this somewhat romanticised and fictionalised way of writing history is not serious enough, but I disagree - history writing is always a kind of fiction since it assumes a lot and weaves a more or less plausible explanation for the events, so as long as the facts are right (according to what we know for the moment, of course, which may change), it's perfectly legitimate to imagine what those people felt, and it's definitely a very engaging way to capture our interest and make us wonder about human nature and aspirations, not that different from our own whenever the epoch.

So I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes History in general and Roman history in particular.

Everyone is Watching, by Megan Bradbury

A lovely book about New York City, focused on its history through an artistic vantage point. Very well written, it has a certain dreamy character. And it makes one want to see the art works the author talks about, like the beautiful photos by Robert Mapplethorpe or Thomas Eakins.It's also about how cities change, the nostalgia for a lost past, and the bittersweet effects of gentryfication. A very good debut novel.

La Grande Illusion, de Jean Renoir

This is a wonderful movie - beautifully directed and acted, a strong story about war and changing times, solidarity and humanity in hard times. It's amazingly modern for the time when it was made (1937) - the use of different languages (something unthinkable in Hollywood until recently), the portrayal of Germans as men as humane as the French. All in all, a great French movie, on a par with others such as Jeux Interdits, Le Salaire de la Peur or Les Diaboliques.

2084, La Fin du Monde, par Boualem Sansal

A very good book; a novel set in a dystopian world ruled by radical Islam. It cleverly depicts the dangers of religion and theocracy, as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale also did using radical Evangelical Christianism, and the corruption, hypocrisy and moral decadence so characteristic of any totalitarian regime. The writing is excellent, in a beautiful and elegant French.

La religion fait peut-être aimer Dieu mais rien n'est plus fort qu'elle pour faire détester l'homme et haïr l'humanité.

Depressingly true words.

The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis

A very interesting book, worth reading by its content if not by its writing, which is overall fairly poor. But the story is fascinating - it depicts the lives and work of the two Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose collaboration produced the fundamental work about human bias in decision making, proving that we are not that rational in our choices after all and that our mistakes are actually systematic and so mostly predictable - and unavoidable? It's a knowledge relevant to all fields of work, including Medicine, and explains many of our mistakes in work and life - politics included. So, even if the writing is not that good (but an easy reading nonetheless), it's still worth reading.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

A great book by Ursula K. Le Guin, from whom I had loved the first three books of the Earthsea series and the wonderful The Dispossessed, read many years ago. The recent death of the author made me wish to read more from her, and I'm happy I did - this book is intelligent, imaginative and beautiful.

Lady Bird, by Greta Gerwig

A very nice movie, that was a pleasant surprise. I had seen Greta Gerwig in her Noam Baumbach movie Frances Ha, which I didn't like that much - the kind of First World artsy problems that I find pretentious and leave me cold. But this one is quite different, so much better - a tender depiction of teenage growing pains, mother-daughter relationship, the sensitive young's yearn to escape the banal and find one's place in the world. The characters are believable and likeable, the performances are great. One cannot but love the moving character of Lady Bird - and even if later in New York City she will become a sort of annoying Frances Ha, that doesn't take away her freshness as a hopeful teenager. With Boyhood, one of the best coming of age movies from the last few years.

Orient, by Christopher Bollen

This is the second Christopher Bollen book I've read, after the very good The Destroyers. And I liked it very much - it's an excellent thriller, it reminded me of an Agatha Christie book for 21st century adults, also made me think of J.K. Rowlings' A Casual Vacancy for its convincing depiction of a small community, with all its petty secrets behind apparently normal and boring provincial lives. Bollen's writing is rich and beautiful, some scenes seem a little too long, because one wants to know what will happen next - the essence of a true page turner. There are some clever twists, and the scene on the ice near the end feels eerie, it reminded me of Peter Hoeg's Smilla.

A very good book, I recommend it.

The Post, by Steven Spielberg

This is a very nice movie, better than most of Spielberg's "grown-up" movies (I always thought he was much better with adventure "teenage" movies like Indiana Jones or ET, when he tries to be serious he tends to be too moralistic and becomes somewhat parochial, in a very American way). This one is a newspaper movie/thriller in the best tradition of All the President's Men, with great performances by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks and, obviously, very relevant to the present American situation, when a constantly lying president declares war on the press. These were the values that truly made America great, and whose erosion is making it increasingly irrelevant. Unfortunately, Americans seem to be getting used and immune to their administration's lies and shamelessness.

Call me by your name, by Luca Guadagnino

I had seen so many good reviews of this movie that my expectations were pretty high - or not that much, since I usually get somewhat mistrustful when something is too praised. But it's actually a very good movie, a tender nostalgic evocation of the discovery of love and sexuality, in a beautiful setting, very well directed and with an outstanding performance by the young Timothée Chalamet. It somehow reminded me of Conte d'Été by Eric Rohmer, probably because of the european atmosphere, the depiction of long and lazy summer time and young people 's experiences of love.

I liked the movie more after I'd seen it, when I knew the Oliver character was 24 years old. Because, while watching it, I thought he should be about 30, and that bothered me a little, somehow it didn't ring true that, as much liberal minded as the parents could be, they should be comfortable with their 17 year-old son having a fling with a much older man; then everything fell into place when I realised he was only 24. Maybe Armie Hammer, handsome as he is, was not the perfect casting? Anyway, they had a great chemistry on screen.

The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman

I was ill when a good friend lent me a book to read, saying something like "It's a beautiful fantasy, it will take your mind away from troubles". It was Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman, I had never heard about him, but ever since the first few pages, when Lyra was sneaking in the Oxford college library and Pantalaimon flew around her as a moth, I was captivated and enthralled. The strange yet familiar world(s) depicted are fascinating, and the story and the characters are great - I loved Northern Lights and soon read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. I find Philip Pullman's universe (or better, multiverse) much more interesting than C.S. Lewis', to whom he's so often compared. It's curious how the movie adaptation failed; I actually found it not inferior to the Tolkien movies adaptations of The Lord of the Rings; Nicole Kidman was an excellent Mrs. Coulter, and the movie was visually very beautiful. But of course the books are so much more interesting.

So I was curious when last year there was a new book developing the story, and now I read it and liked it very much. There is no more the fascination of discovering a new world, rather the pleasure of returning to an old familiar and beloved one. It's another beautiful narrative, that adds information about daemons and Dust, told in a gripping way that makes it a page turner. The new characters, Malcolm, Alice and Bonneville, are as engaging as Lyra, Will or Mrs. Coulter. And I always like the way good fantasy and sci-fi writers deal with real important subjects to make us think, in this case the dangers of religion, single-mindedness and youth indoctrination.

I am looking forward to the next volume.

The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood

Like many people since the 70s, I first heard of Christopher Isherwood as the author of the story that inspired the movie Cabaret; unlike most of the people that then read him, the movie didn't make me read him, quite the opposite, it actually pulled me away from it for many years - until now. I enjoyed the movie, it has very good musical acts, but I found the story feeble and far from appealing (guess it would have been different if it had been A Single Man, a movie I watched many years later).

Anyway, I kept stumbling across Christopher Isherwood's name along the years: he was published by the Hogarth Press, he was admired by Gore Vidal, his portrait (with his partner Dan Bachardy) had been painted by David Hockney... So I kept him in my to-read list.

And now I finally read him, and understood what all the hype was about. I was overwhelmed, it is really first class writing, I hadn't enjoyed a book so much in a long time. Not only the writing is beautiful and the stories engaging, but the characters are unforgettably created - even more than the famous Sally Bowles, there is Arthur Norris, Otto Nowak, Natalia Landauer, Bernhard Landauer, even fraulein Schroeder, all incredibly believable and endearing each in its own way.

It is so good to find great fiction, to feel there are still so many books to read and enjoy. Isherwood absolutely deserves his fame, it's a wonderful author.

Requiem

I've been thinking a lot about her lately, and wanting to write about her, but keep shying away from it out of fear of not doing her justice.

She was born in Guinea-Bissao, from a middle-class family, worked as a government clerk and was happily married. Then she got pregnant, and then everything went wrong: eclampsia, renal failure, a plane to Lisbon to get dialysis. Then here she was, alive but alone in a foreign country, with no support whatsoever from Guinea's embassy, as so many other renal patients. That's when I met her, as another recently arrived patient from Guinea.

I instantly took to this very fat and beautiful young woman, with the most happy smile and friendly demeanour I have ever seen. She was the kind of person that is born to be happy, always optimistic and with an indefatigable love for life, even when things went terribly wrong. And wrong they went, time after time. She lost her relatively comfortable life in Guinea, her husband soon found another woman. With no money, she had to support herself with cleaning work. A renal transplant failed, vascular accesses failed, the bone complications of secondary hyperparathyroidism crippled her and gave her constant pain and a hip fracture, she suffered from several blood stream infections from her catheters, she got hepatitis C.

A second transplant worked for a few years, but rejection followed, and she was back on dialysis. Meanwhile, she kept struggling with poverty - I remember being appalled when I knew her landlord had removed the doors and windows of her flat in winter because she was late with her rent.

But through it all, she almost always managed to keep her good spirits, her sunny disposition. She used to ask me about my children, and then always said: "Take care of me, I'm your oldest child! I'm counting on you!" "You'll never get rid of me, mark my words!" And her hearty laugh always warmed my heart, and I'd tell her: "Yes, you're just as foolish as my kids!"

And thus many years went by, I was her doctor for 22 years. It was always a pleasure to meet her, her smiling black face, her colourful outfits and afro wigs so typical of an attractive West African woman. We shared jokes about her weight, I would tell her how worried I'd be if she ever get thin.

And now she is dead, as so many of my patients. Another of the many complications she suffered from, only this time she didn't make it. And I'm so sad. Because it really felt like she was my oldest daughter. She was born to be happy, but fate dealt her a really gloomy hand. And I'm SO sad. Could I have helped her more? I feel so useless sometimes. She deserved such a different life.

Native Realm, by Czeslaw Milosz

An interesting book, very insightful in what regards Poland's recent history and subjects as nationalities and the ideologies and day-to-day living during the Cold War. I did not always agree with the somewhat aristocratic points of view of the author, but his is a lucid voice, and always pleasant to read. All in all, a very good book.