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Welcome back to Got Books! On today's episode we'll first look at news from the book world and then go to our book review, with a new guest. We'll talk about famous bookshops from around the world, the impact the Taliban's takeover has on the Future of Kabul Booksellers, the Booker Prize and a couple of much awaited book releases. So let's get to it!

First I'd like to tell you about an article that came out this week in Financial Times, in which journalists nominate awe-inspiring places to get your literary fix, from Mumbai to Buenos Aires. On Got Books, we love bookshops, it is the main reason we started this podcast, to promote and celebrate independent bookshops from all over the world, and we've been so fortunate to have and share with you lots of conversations with booksellers. So let's check this list put together by FT.. to which I would add every single brilliant bookshop we had the pleasure to visit on Got Books.

https://www.ft.com/content/42bb3a0f-ba18-4dc7-ae8a-570fd989cbfc

While these and many other bookshops are thriving, sadly booksellers in the Afghan capital Kabul are having a difficult time. As I am sure you know, the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement has seized the city in August and declared Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate. This has consequences at all levels of society, affecting booksellers as well.

https://www.news18.com/news/world/considered-profane-talibans-takeover-threatens-future-of-kabul-booksellers-4373774.html

In other news, the 2021 Booker Prize ceremony will be broadcast from the BBC’s Radio Theatre on Wednesday 3 November. The prizes celebrate outstanding fiction, whether originally written in English or translated into English, bringing recognition and many new readers to gifted authors from around the globe. So let's have a look at who is on the the 2021 shortlist, I'd love to know if you're rooting for any one of these: https://thebookerprizes.com/

And finally, before we get to today's book review, a quick note on 2 new releases that I'm sure many readers were waiting for.

Amor Towles is going from Russia to... Nebraska. Fun fact, Towles worked in investing for more than 20 years before pivoting to full-time writing, and he became known in 2016 after publishing A Gentleman in Moscow. His new novel, The Lincoln Highway, is quite different. "My new novel, The Lincoln Highway, is about three 18-year-old boys and an 8-year-old boy on a journey from Nebraska to New York City in 1954 — the whole story lasting just 10 days." One more book for my to read pile.

And because I have a bit more time than usual as I've just started my maternity leave, I'll add one more new book to my list - The Island of Missing Trees. By Elif Shafak. This one came out a couple of months ago already, and according to the review in the Guardian - "it charts the moving story of Kostas and Defne Kazantzakis, young lovers in a painfully divided postcolonial Cyprus – one Greek and Christian, the other Turkish and Muslim – and the emotional price they continue to pay after moving to England." If you've read it already, let me know what you thought.

And now, let's go to today's book review, with Victoria Wood @bibliolifestyle

S1 Ep. 2: David Gordon, Curious Fox (Berlin, Germany)

Got Books? Conversations with BooksellersBy Antonia Caraveteanu Feb 11, 2021