Reviews and Comments

Discovered this book on Twitter (in the good old days) and gave it as a present to mum, who’s a calligrapher. We both love medieval manuscripts and can assure you this book is not just for kids, and you can read it more than once 😁

Incredibly good read, personal but thorough analysis of the times he lives in. A sense of recognition of those emotions and feelings echoes across the chasm of time (and WWII) separating us from Zweig. He is not an objective (or accurate?) reporter but he captures the mood.

the book shows its age: the guy is your prototype orientalist white scholar-cum-adventurer and no surprise some claims float around that Indiana Jones is based on this character. Thrill seeking, entitled, opinionated and racist AF yet the whole way through he manages to write well enough for me to feel I don’t want to put the book down. I keep thinking that if he gets himself killed when his disguise falls through, he’d bloody well deserved it for lack of respect to other cultures he claims to study, and yet I feel the tension each time he gets into a sticky situation. No indication at the end he paid his servants (enough) for what they had to put up with, or what happened to them when he returned to India!

Good overview of chances open for improving education, but also remaining in the final analysis a bit to hopeful or presenting things as easy to achieve in the final part, when you need a totally different culture outside schools to make this work. Ambitious, yes. Achievable? Only with time and effort, but worth a shot

Great story- classic procedural but satisfying to read

Improving my French by reading on my commute

Ongelooflijk mooie zinnen, waarmee de auteur een heel specifieke sfeer in het naoorlogse Vlaanderen weet op te roepen, en ook spanning opbouwt. Ik had constant mijn grootouders voor ogen (die een andere ervaring hadden van WWII), en hoe het dorpsleven er aantoe ging gebaseerd op de verhalen die ik hoorde.

Heel veel blijft open voor de fantasie van de lezer, net zoals ik het graag heb, en toch is er een afgerond einde.

(Read the first chapter a long time ago, now settling in to read through the entire thing, slowly)