Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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One day inside a book?

I was looking for a good idea for a post, today after lunch, and then my friend Claire came to the rescue.

“Imagine you can spend a day inside a book,” was the prompt – one of those things going around on Facebook, you know, that a friend passed on to me. “What would you choose?”

Aha!
Now that looks like the sort of easy thing that could land me a post in ten minutes!

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But then I started thinking – if not along the same lines tha Claire follows in her own post, along pretty similar tracks.
One day inside a book? Continue reading →


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Treasure hunting

fortune & glory smallIn a week I will be following a MOOC on Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime (University of Glasgow), together with a course on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds (University of Southampton).
Yes, I’m doing this both for fun and as documentation for future stories – and it will be eight hours per week, for four weeks, well spent.

It’s quite suitable, therefore, that the postman just delivered my copy of Fortune & Glory, by David McIntee, published by Osprey Adventures.

The book is subtitled A Treasure Hunter’s Handbook, and is filled with the sort of information I might need were I to drop my current boring life and start down the same track followed by the likes of Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake. Continue reading →


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Karavansara.live

karavansara logo bright 2016As some might have noticed, Karavansara is now running with a new URL – we now go by karavansara.live.
Old bookmarks will still work – you will be redirected to the new address.

Some users1 will experience some problem, depending on the frequency with which their ISP updates their DNS.
Or something.

Anyway, hoping glitches will be corrected as soon as possible, Karavansara is growing.
Now we have a domain name.

 

  1. including… ehm, myself… ↩


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Other People’s Pulps: A… for Assassin

I am proud to announce that my translation of Ernesto Gastaldi‘s award-wining thriller, A… for Assassin, published by Raven’s Head, is available for purchase through Amazon.

a for assassin

Originally an award-winning play, Gastaldi’s story was adapted to the screen in 1966, an original giallo that while forgotten by some, still has its small but faithful cult following.

 

A COME ASSASSINOI had lots of fun translating this unusual, tongue-in-cheek, cruelly amusing work.
The plot is carried most by the witty, crackling dialogue – and short, vivid descriptions hit the reader almost by surprise.
Part old dark house mystery, part family plot, and set in a 1960s England that is a place of fantasy, A… for Assassin plays like a twisted Elizabethan tragedy in which no one is innocent, and hides a nasty sting in its tail.

I really hope that the readers will have as much fun reading A… for Assassin as I had translating it.
It’s not that they don’t make them like this anymore – actually, they never made them like this.
This is a unique tale from a unique author.


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Karavansara Reading Challenge: the Bookshelf

So, the Karavansara Reading Challenge 2016 is getting real, and I have no idea of what it’s going to happen, or how.
It’s part of the fun, I guess.
We have an official start date – February the 16 2016. Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart left Peking on the 16th of February 1935, so it feels like the right day to start.

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In the next days I’ll start posting contents that will be hopefully interesting for both active challenge participants, for lurkers and for passers-by.
Today, a short roundup of the Challenge Bookshelf, the stuff I’ll keep at hand in the next weeks… Continue reading →