The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) by Céline Martin (Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face)

Paperback: St Thérèse's mother, Zélie Martin, was herself a saint, canonized in 2015 along with her husband, Louis. Zélie married at  age twenty-seven, bore nine children, ran a home business, and did a superb job of raising five daughters - including "the greatest saint of modern times."

She died of breast cancer at the age of forty-five, but her greatness was recognized by her family and her friends and is now known to the world. Zélie suffered many of the ordinary burdens of life, yet she was happy, loved her children "madly," and enjoyed them immensely.

Turned down by the convent because of poor health, Zélie Martin courageously faced the worldly struggles of dealing with family worries, illnesses, the death of four of her children, discipline problems, business problems, irreligious people - she even quartered and counselled young German soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War. 

Zélie brought her totally Catholic outlook to everything she did.

The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) (1957) was written by her daughter Céline, who had access to Zélie's letters and to the reminiscences of her older sisters in the Carmel of Lisieux. It is authentic and inspiring, showing what a tremendous life's work and accomplishment it is to be a truly Catholic mother.

The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) is translated from the French by Fr Michael Collins SMA.

About the author: Céline (1869-1959) was four years older than Thérèse and closest in age. She entered the Carmel in Lisieux after Thérèse and took the name Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face.

Foresight!

Serving Vs Ruling

It Does Rhyme

The Pillars Of The Earth (Kingsbridge Series) by Ken Follett

Paperback: The Pillars of the Earth (1989) is the spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England. It is Ken Follett’s classic historical masterpiece. 

A Mason with a Dream

1135 and civil war, famine and religious strife abound. With his family on the verge of starvation, mason Tom Builder dreams of the day that he can use his talents to create and build a cathedral like no other.

A Monk with a Burning Mission

Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, is resourceful, but with money scarce he knows that for his town to survive it must find a way to thrive, and so he makes the decision to build within it the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

A World of High Ideals and Savage Cruelty

As Tom and Philip meet so begins an epic tale of ambition, anarchy and absolute power. In a world beset by strife and enemies that would thwart their plans, they will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions in a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.

The Pillars of the Earth is the first instalment in the classic historical masterpiece Kingsbridge series set in twelfth-century England.

About the author: Ken Follett is a Welsh thriller and historical fiction writer, whose works are phenomenal bestsellers around the world. Follett’s first literary success came in 1978 with the spy thriller Eye of the Needle, which he wrote whilst Deputy Managing Director of independent publishing house Everest Books. After a run of espionage novels, including The Key to Rebecca and The Man from St Petersburg, Follett changed tack with the historical epic The Pillars of the Earth in 1989. A multi-generational story set in 11th century England, the book became an incredible bestseller, spawning two sequels and the 2020 prequel The Evening and the Morning known collectively as The Kingsbridge Series. 

Follett returned to historical saga during 2010-14, with the Century Trilogy, which followed the fortunes of several dynasties through the 20th century.

Rating: 7/5

Nobody In History

God Is Red: The Secret Story Of How Christianity Survived And Flourished In Communist China by Liao Yiwu

Paperback: In God is Red (2011), Chinese dissident journalist and poet Liao Yiwu - once lauded, later imprisoned, and now celebrated author of For a Song and a Hundred Songs and The Corpse Walker - profiles the extraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpse into the underground world of belief that is taking hold within the officially atheistic state of Communist China.

When he first stumbled upon a vibrant Christian community in the officially secular China, he knew little about Christianity. In fact, he had been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society. 

Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including: the over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government; the surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China; the Protestant minister, now memorialized in London's Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as "an incorrigible counterrevolutionary".

This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China's valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people's hearts.

God is Red will resonate with readers of Phillip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity and Peter Hessler's Country Driving. 

God is Red is translated from the Mandarin by Wenguang Huang.

About the author: Liao Yiwu is a poet, novelist, and screenwriter. In 1989, he published an epic poem, Massacre, that condemned the killings in Tiananmen Square and for which he spent four years in prison. His works include Testimonials and Report on China’s Victims of Injustice. In 2003, he received a Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett Grant, and in 2007, he received a Freedom to Write Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center. In 2011, he was awarded the German Geschwister-Scholl-Preis and in 2012, the Ryszard Kapuściński Award as well as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 2011, Liao dramatically escaped from China and now splits his time between the United States and Germany. 

In his address at the prize ceremony in the Paulskirche, Liao Yiwu described China as "the source of global disasters" and an "ever-expanding garbage dump". He concluded his speech with the wish that "for the peaceful well-being of all humanity, this empire (China) must break apart".

About the translator: Wenguang Huang is a writer and freelance journalist whose articles and translations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal Asia, the Chicago Tribune, the South China Morning Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Paris Review. He is also the author of The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir (2012).

Fear What He Might Say

Father Kolbe In Nagasaki by Tomei Ozaki OFM Conv

Paperback: Come to know about the life of St Maximilian Kolbe in Japan and his love for Our Lady in Father Kolbe in Nagasaki (originally published in 1988; 2021) by Brother Tomei Ozaki! 

In 1930, he founded a friary in Nagasaki (still active) amid seemingly impossible challenges and hardships with the help of the Immaculata. This book was written by a Japanese Franciscan Conventual Friar, Brother Ozaki, who, in 1945, entered the same friary founded by St Maximilian - just two months after Nagasaki was blasted by the atomic bomb. 

Brother Ozaki resided with the friars who personally knew and lived with St Maximilian and who highly admired the saint’s heroic act of martyrdom for a fellow prisoner. This engaging book tells of these friars’ endearing experiences and memories of St Maximilian during those six years - sure to stir interest not only in this heroic saint - but also Our Lady.

In this book, we learn about Fr Kolbe’s relentless desire to make Our Lady known and loved by printing the magazine The Knights of the Immaculata in Japanese; his daily trials with the living conditions he endured in the friary - and also the captivating memories of the friars who prayed and worked with him - and who truly loved him; how the personalities of the different friars come alive when they tell their stories, enlivening the imagination and fostering love for all of them; how St Maximilian’s love for Our Lady protected the friary during the atomic blast; how Brother Ozaki is a humble “proclaimer” of St Maximilian and see how his humility is the trumpet Our Lady uses; and so much more!

Father Kolbe in Nagasaki is translated from the Japanese by Professor Shinichiro Araki of Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University, supervised by Professor Kevin M Doak of Georgetown University, USA.

About the author: Tomei Ozaki was a Japanese Conventual Franciscan Friar. He was accepted into the friary founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki, just after having experienced the atomic bombing. In this friary, Friar Ozaki heard a lot about Father Kolbe’s life from the Polish friars who had lived with him. Friar Ozaki wrote this book mainly based on the friars’ testimonies. He also wrote another book about Father Kolbe, Love of Sacrifice. He passed away in Nagasaki on 15 April 2021.

The Man Who Played With Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files And The Hunt For An Assassin by Jan Stocklassa

Hardback: The author of the Millennium novels laid out the clues. Now a journalist is following them.

When Stieg Larsson died, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been working on a true mystery that out-twisted his Millennium novels: the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. It was the first time in history that a head of state had been murdered without a clue who had done it - and on a Stockholm street at point-blank range.

Internationally known for his fictional villains, Larsson was well acquainted with their real-life counterparts and documented extremist activities throughout the world. For years he had been amassing evidence that linked their terrorist acts to what he called “one of the most astounding murder cases” he had ever covered. 

Larsson’s archive was forgotten until journalist Jan Stocklassa was given exclusive access to the author’s secret project.

In The Man Who Played with Fire (2019), Stocklassa collects the pieces of Larsson’s true-crime puzzle to follow the trail of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy begun by one of the world’s most famous thriller writers. Together they set out to solve a mystery that no one else could.

The Man Who Played with Fire is translated from the Swedish by Tara F Chace.

About the author: Jan Stocklassa is a Swedish writer and journalist focusing on large-scale conspiracies in international politics. In his books, Stocklassa uses a narrative nonfiction style to unveil unknown facts about important events in recent history.

His breakthrough came with the critically acclaimed bestseller Stieg Larsson’s Archive: The Key to the Palme Murder, a narrative nonfiction book published in 2018 that has been sold in more than fifty countries and translated into twenty-six languages. Following its publication, Swedish police began actively pursuing the leads presented in the book in the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

His professional career includes being a Swedish diplomat, launching the Metro newspaper in Prague, and collaborating as a journalist with major media houses in Sweden and abroad, as well as coproducing the movie and TV series Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire.

About the translator: Tara Chace has translated more than forty novels from Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Her most recent translations include Christina Rickardsson’s Never Stop Walking, Bobbie Peers’ William Wenton books, Jo Nesbø’s Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series, and Martin Jensen’s The King’s Hounds trilogy. An avid reader and language learner, Chace earned her PhD in Scandinavian languages and literature from the University of Washington in 2003. She enjoys translating books for adults and children. She lives in Seattle with her family.

The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore

Paperback: The Manningtree Witches (2021) is a beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. 

England, 1643. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation.

And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices.

Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. 

But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumours of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca - and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling.

Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation’s arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they have suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom.

The Manningtree Witches is Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for November 2021, The Times paperback bestseller and Sunday Times Book of the Year 2021; shortlisted for both the Costa First Novel Award 2021 and The Writers Guild 2021 Best Debut Novel; and winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021.

About the author: A K Blakemore is a poet, translator and novelist from London. She studied Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Humbert Summer (Eyewear, 2015) and Fondue (Offord Road Books, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection. She has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo (My Tenantless Body, Poetry Translation Centre, 2019). Her poetry and prose writing has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the The London Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Review and The White Review, among others. 

Rating: 5/5

Duty Vs Law

St Athanasius I of Alexandria (c296–298 - 373)

Happy New Year 2022