Speed of Life

Kamila Shamsie's novel "Burnt Shadows" uses a cinemascope vision to portray a Japanese woman's struggle to understand her life in a spinning world where historic forces seem to lead her and her family into an inevitable showdown with fate. Hiroko carries the memories and scars imprinted into her skin from the atomic blast in Nagasaki in 1945 from Japan to India to post-partition Pakistan. Her son Raza carries the memories into a politically charged New York where the events of September 11, 2001 still loom in our headlines. Shamsie deftly leads the reader through the haunted landscapes of the last sixty years and by distilling chilling historical events through the vision of one family her words shed light into the shadows of time. An important work that I highly recommend. More on the author: Kamila Shamsie: British Council Contemporary Authors Find "Burnt Shadows"

Joseph Mallord William Turner ( April 23, 1775-December 19, 1851) The Fifth Plague of Egypt 48" x 72" oil on canvas 1800 Indianapolis Museum of Art photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Spurred on by fellow artblogger, Tyler Green , the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art are putting their paintings on the line over next weekend's Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. I'm calling an improbable New Orleans victory over the Colts. In which case the Indianapolis Museum of Art will lend Turner's vibrant and mysterious The Fifth Plague of Egypt to the New Orleans Museum of Art. If the favored Colts win, the New Orleans Museum of Art will lend Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Check out Tyler's blog for the ultimate in museum director trash talk and mannered New Orleans (and Indianapolis) grace as well. New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bulla...