Our Favourite Reads in 2021
At the last Starling Bureau meeting of 2021 we got to talking about our favourite reads of the year and thought we’d share them with you and on our Bookshop page.
Told through 50 Japanese onomatopoeic characters: part memoir, part guide to the emotional rollercoaster of language learning and cultural immersion. A stroke of genius. RC
Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver, translated by Julia Sanches.
Oliver’s debut volume of lyrical essays that meditate on migration, language, and the idea of home, in a beautiful translation by Julia Sanches. ZP
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.
Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Stuart’s debut offers a brutal portrayal of alcoholism and poverty in 1980s Glasgow. Harrowing yet impossible to put down. PRG
A tour of the vibrant black and immigrant neighbourhoods missing from your guidebook to Europe. Perfect for travelling vicariously, bonus points for starting from Firth Park. RC
In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz by Michela Wrong.
A beautifully written, wry account of the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, impeccably researched and quite lacking in the slightly condescending, Great White Explorer vibe that one sometimes finds in other titles about the DRC. RG
I Bring You Tilbury Town by Ronke Osinowo.
A collection of thoughts and drawings, inspired by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fictional town of Tilbury. Original and evocative. PRG
De cada quinhentos uma alma (“One Soul of Five Hundred”) by Ana Paula Maia.
The second book in a trilogy (but that can be read independently), Maia returns with some familiar characters in this dark, dystopian thriller about an epidemic somewhere in Brazil’s Central-West. ZP