Tato autorka se noří do hlubin lidské zkušenosti a zkoumá složité vztahy a kulturní střety prostřednictvím poutavých příběhů. Její styl je charakteristický pronikavými postřehy a bohatým, sugestivním jazykem, který čtenáře vtáhne do světa jejích postav. Skrze své psaní se snaží osvětlit neviditelné nitky, které spojují různé kultury a jednotlivce, často s využitím svých rozsáhlých cestovatelských zkušeností jako inspirace. Její díla zvou k zamyšlení nad podstatou identity a lidského spojení v globálním kontextu.
The memoir explores the author's upbringing in a 1980s council estate in Crewe, shaped by her parents' involvement in The Divine Light Mission cult. This unique intersection of class struggles and countercultural beliefs led to significant family upheaval, resulting in lasting impacts of turmoil and poverty. Through personal reflection, the narrative delves into the complexities of identity and the consequences of radical beliefs on family dynamics.
It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie at the ancient Silk Route city of Kashgar to help establish a Christian mission. Lizzie is in thrall to their forceful and unyielding leader Millicent, but Eva's motivations for leaving her bourgeois life back at home are less clear-cut. As they attempt to navigate their new home and are met with resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her book, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar... In present-day London another story is beginning. Frieda, a young woman adrift in her own life, opens her front door one night to find a man sleeping on the landing. In the morning he is gone, leaving on the wall an exquisite drawing of a long-tailed bird and a line of Arabic script. Tayeb, who has fled to England from Yemen, has arrived on Frieda's doorstep just as she learns that she is the next-of-kin to a dead woman she has never heard of- a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises - among them an ill-tempered owl. The two wanderers begin an unlikely friendship as their worlds collide, and they embark on a journey that is as great, and as unexpected, as Eva's. A stunning debut peopled by unforgettable characters, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is an extraordinary story of inheritance and the search for belonging in a fractured and globalised world.
"In 1920s Jerusalem, civic advisor and architect Charles Ashton has an ambitious project to redesign the Holy City by importing English parks to the desert and knocking down Ottoman minarets. He employs William Harrington, a British pilot, to take aerial photographs of the city and surrounding desert. At this time, Palestine, under British administration, is a surprisingly peaceful mix of characters; British colonials, exiled Armenians, and Greek, Arab, and Jewish officials rub elbows, but tensions are growing and there are simmers of trouble ahead. Eleanora, the young English wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer, meets and falls for William Harrington, threatening her marriage, particularly when William discovers that Eleanora's husband is part of an underground nationalist group intent on removing the British. Years later, in 1937, Ashton's daughter Prue is an artist living a reclusive life in Shoreham, Sussex with her son, having escaped the pressures of the London art world in the aftermath of the Surrealist exhibitions and a damaging marriage. Harrington arrives and what he reveals unravels her world, and she must follow the threads that lead her back to secrets long-ago buried in Jerusalem."-- Author's website