Thursday, October 20, 2016

Top ten books about borders

Marcus Sedgwick's books have won and been shortlisted for many awards; most notably, he has been shortlisted for Britain’s Carnegie Medal six times, has received two Printz Honors, for Revolver and Ghosts of Heaven, and in 2013 won the Printz Award for Midwinterblood.

His new YA novel is Saint Death.

One of Sedgwick's ten top books about borders, as shared at the Guardian:
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene

Greene’s self-confessed attempt to “write a book to please” uses the old writers’ trick of the world in microcosm as he outlines the fates of a group of passengers aboard the Orient Express. Borders aplenty are swiftly crossed, but this is an uneasy journey, full of tension and suspicion, and antisemitism is never far away. It’s here, too, that we see someone actually question the notion of borders, as Dr Czinner, teacher and revolutionary, cries out: “How old fashioned you are with your frontiers and your patriotism!” But this is Europe in the mid-1930s, and the world was about to see the ultimate dark face of such concepts.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue