I was searching for books about Azerbaijan and skipped over the country’s most famous novel, Ali and Nino: A Love Story, because I didn’t know it was the country’s most famous novel. I was worried about getting stuck with some dreck. Then I saw that The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught Between East… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Rest of the World
Antarctica: A Year On Ice
Antarctica isn’t a country, but I am writing about it anyway. My blogging challenge, my rules, right? Antarctica A Year On Ice is a documentary about life in Antartica over the winter. The continent has about 4,000 residents in the summer season, peaking in December – February, and roughly 1,000 people the rest of the… [Read More]
Antigua and Barbuda: Annie John
The Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda were British colonies until 1981. Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Annie John in 1985, although it originally appeared as a series of short stories in The New Yorker. Annie John is a coming of age story about a girl who lives on Antigua. The exact time is never specified, but… [Read More]
Andorra
Andorra: A Novel is not set in the real Andorra, which is disappointing. It’s set in a fictionalized version of it that takes some liberties with geography. The real Andorra is a land-locked country situated between Spain and France. It has 77,000 people who live in its capital, Andorra La Vella, or in the surrounding… [Read More]
Apple, the EU, and Competitive Advantage
On July 15, 2020, the General Court of the European Union ruled that Ireland had not offered illegal state aid to Apple, so the computer giant did not have to pay €13 billion in back taxes[i]. Apple had been allowed to set up its European operations so that on paper they were in Ireland, even… [Read More]