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Abracadabra! And I appeared. As suddenly as I 'disapparated'. Blogging became boring. I got other interests. I learnt (still learning) a computer language, took up some courses related to my 'profession', Kofi - my son, came along etc. But I also (re)read a few books, about which I did not blog. Hence, I will be attempting to go back in time to just talk about (not review) some of the books I read.  Prague Cemetery falls into the kind of books that could hold your attention span for longer periods of time. Those books that are exactly as you perceived them to be. For those Dan Brown fans (of which I am not excluded), take any of Dan's books, add more intriguing plots, and crank up its literary value. To this, add the fact that almost every character in this novel has a historical counterpart, and you will get an amazing book that takes you through the historical development of conflicts, assassinations, and much more. The book sought to portray how individuals...

Jonathan Tel from the UK has won the 2015 Commonwealth 2015 Short Story Prize for his story The Human Phonograph. Within its short form, the story encompasses great sweeps of the world and its history – from the US moon landing to Chinese nuclear tests to reading 19th century Russian literature. The protagonist of the story is a lonely figure in this vast world. “The Human Phonograph ranges from the personal to the universal. The resonances remained with the judges, long after the reading. As one said, we were drawn into the lonely world of the protagonist and we stayed there. It is a disconcerting, extraordinary story of an individual in search of independence and reassurance in a difficult world,” said Romesh Gunesekera, Chair of the international panel of judges. The Human Phonograph is published by The Guardian online . Its writer, Jonathan Tel, is himself a polymath with interests as varied as those in his story. A theoretical physicist and opera librettist, he has previously p...