What I’m Reading: Edward Burke
By Kate Sidley for the Sunday Times:
Edward Burke is the author of the martial arts travel memoir The Swordmaster’s Apprentice
I have been travelling in the US recently and have filled my iPad with American classics. I particularly enjoyed Mark Twain’s Roughing It, which describes his journey across America in the days of stage coaches and gold rushes.
Twain’s wry (and slightly hokey) irony still shines through 150 years later, and it is charmingly unpolished – it occasionally feels as if it has been dashed out on a gold-rush-era typewriter over a series of late nights, with a bottle of whiskey to hand.
I recently finished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. It’s a remarkable ride which weaves a number of themes – a paean to New York, a reflection on the music business, a hard-eyed look at the past, a dyspeptic near-term sci-fi – into a thoroughly engaging whole.
Over the holidays I rounded off my American review with Michael Lewis’ Boomerang, which looks at the sovereign debt crises that are stalking the planet, and ends with a very sobering analysis of American short-termism.
- The Swordmaster’s Apprentice is published by Penguin SA
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Book details
- The Swordmaster’s Apprentice by Edward Burke
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EAN: 9780143527978
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Apr
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