Foolish Heroines Zeinab Assaf

Foolish Heroines Zeinab AssafJanina Reston is a language expert, translating fiendishly tricky Arabic and Asian mathematical and scientific texts. Words are her world. But she cant find any to share with her husband Owen. Instead, she confides in a spider named Gladys (who may or may not be her deceased grandmother). She lives in an ordinary city suburb where extraordinary things happen. Lilys husband dies in a strange accident with a milk bottle, while Fatima writes biographies

and now it seems that everywhere

The descriptive poems in the book’s first part set the scene for the political and artistic perspectives in its second – made up of pieces arising from time spent as poet-in-residence at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading

everyone asked with their eyes

a tour de force spanning three generations from the mid-20th century through the Balkans wars of the 90s until present day

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but rather only life

who never quite had the chance to build a literary career to match her talents

Jan Carew began writing his memoirs

but which is not perceived by the ideologies of its time or expressible in their language

imperialism and revolution

is a good measure

lyrical and beautifully crafted poems