I’m reading now AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
I’m reading next TOURISTS: HOW THE BRITISH WENT ABROAD TO FIND THEMSELVES by Lucy Lethbridge
In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to British tourists. The 19th century was to be an age driven by steam technology, mass industrialisation and movement. In the footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights.
In Tourists, the voices of these travellers - puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed - are brought vividly to life. From the discomfort of the stagecoach to the 'self-contained pleasure palace' of the beach resort, Lucy Lethbridge examines two centuries of tourists' experience. From portable cameras to postcards and suntans, Tourists explores how tourism has reflected changing attitudes to modernity and how, from the grand hotel to the campsite, the foreign holiday exposes deep fears and hopes.
Everyone’s talking about TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin
Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world - of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over.
When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: money, fame, duplicity…tragedy.
Pre-order now THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O’Farrell (dispatches on publication - 30th August)
Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here. He intends to kill her.
Lucrezia is 16 years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence's grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband. What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival?
I’VE HAD to submit an awful lot of registrations in the last few months. The Booksellers Association, of course. Royal Mail. HMRC. Companies House. The Pensions Regulator. Wandsworth Council. Nielsen, which compiles the bestseller charts. The British Institute of Innkeeping. And all the big publishers had forms to open trade accounts (several of them replete with fax numbers!)
Perhaps the most unexpected honour, though, was bestowed upon me by the Estonian tax authorities. Yes, Backstory is now officially Estonian (at least when it comes to EU tax). Hämmastav!
Let me explain. Firstly, I should say that this is not a tax wheeze. Or, if it is, it’s the kind of wheeze where you wind up paying more rather than less.
Regular readers (hi Mum) may remember that I grumbled some months ago about the difficulties I was having sending parcels around the world. Thanks to Brexit, it was easier to figure out how to send something to Notre Dame, Indiana, than to Paris. Several of my early parcels were returned; some were collected by customers with added customs levies; others simply disappeared.
Then I discovered IOSS: Import One Stop Shop. As the EU commission pithily puts it, IOSS is an “electronic portal businesses can use since July 2021 to comply with their VAT e-commerce obligations on distance sales of imported goods”. There’s more… a lot more… here.
In short, you register with the tax authorities in one EU country, then charge each country’s VAT tariff to customers from the EU, just as you would do in Britain. At the end of the month, you tot up the VAT, fill in a (quite long) form and whizz it back to the EU. It only works for purchases under €150 at a time, it involves a fair amount of paperwork and I needed to work out each country’s different VAT rate for books. Most of all, it is an awful lot more faff than before Brexit, when you could just chuck a book in the post to Munich as to Manchester. BUT it works. Hallelujah!
Does it make much money once the delivery charges and administration time is factored in? No. But I have ended up with a very happy (and regular) customer in Denmark:
So aitäh! (I think…) to the Estonian treasury. I am delighted to be doing my bit for Anglo-European friendship…
More next week,
Tom