Two Hours by Alba Arikha

“Someone rang my husband. Your wife is not well, the person said. Your wife is not well.”

When Clara’s parents transplant her from Paris to New York at the age of sixteen, a fleeting encounter with a young man seems, for a brief period, to open up new possibilities. As she strives to fulfil her vocation as a writer, and as she struggles in later years with the cumulative constraints of an unhappy marriage, Clara’s imagination is strangely haunted by a life that might have been.

Tracing Clara’s story from her adolescence to her experience of motherhood, and then through to a pivotal bid for freedom, Two Hours is an exceptional novel. Witty, perceptive, and profoundly humane, this is the work of a writer at the height of her powers.

Lichenpedia: A Brief Compendium by Kay Hurley

Lichenpedia is a delightfully entertaining and beautifully illustrated A–Z treasury about the strange, obscure, and remarkable world of lichens, from their unique and essential roles in nature and the ways they are used in dyeing, brewing, and drug-making to how they have inspired writers and artists, from Henry David Thoreau to modern painters.

Sebastião Salgado at 80 – Guardian Article

The legendary photojournalist looks back on a life committed to documenting people and the planet, and explains why nature became his focus – article in the Guardian, link below.

In 2004 California University Press published his book of Sahel, The End of the Road, which documented his fifteen-month project of photographing the drought-stricken Sahel region of Africa in the countries of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan. A link to the book is below.