Posts by Kimberly Sullivan
A Rome ghost town in Lockdown
I’ve been living in Rome for years, and I’ve never seen it a deserted as it’s been the past week. For just over a week now, we’ve been in lockdown from the corona virus. Lockdown was gradual. First it was school kids at home, then most workers were shifted to teleworking. Soon restaurants, shops, theatres,…
Read MoreLove (& life) in the time of Corona virus
With a nod to the brilliant Gabriel Garcia-Marquez whose title I shamefully borrowed and updated for our troubling times. But history (and literature) repeat themselves. Today’s Italy is beginning to feel like Florentino and Fermina’s unnamed city (Cartagena) in their unnamed Latin American country (Colombia). The lock-down has moved from Italy’s north to the whole…
Read MoreAt the heart of it all in Guayaquil’s Malecón
It didn’t take long to discover that the life of the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil all unfolds along the Malecón 2000. This is the name given to an ambitious urban development project, a large and pleasant is the name given to boardwalk skirting along the wide Guayas River. This project to revitalize central Guayaquil…
Read MoreCongrats to the 2020 PEN/ Faulkner Award Finalists
I always follow the major literary awards shortlists (and sometimes longlists) as I’m looking for new reading material. That’s why I was happy to see that the finalists for the 2020 PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fisction have just been announced. Congratulations to all the finalists. the final award will be announced in early May. In…
Read MoreMilan’s Renaissance castle – Castello Sforzesco
Smack dab in the middle of Milan is an imposing reminder of its past. As a tourist wandering Milan’s compact historic center, you’d be remiss to not notice its Castello Sforzesco, Milan’s most importnat Reniassance monument. Completely restored at the start of the 20th century, the Sforza Castle was once the headquarters of the noble…
Read MoreQuarantine – a word comes full circle
I’ve always loved history and etymology, so not surprising I was attracted to both elements with the word quarantine. The English word quarantine comes from the Italian term ‘quarantena’. The term derives from the number ‘quaranta’ – meaning forty. During the period of the Bubonic Plague, or Black Death, that spread around Europe from the…
Read MoreDreaming of white beaches and warm waves … in the Maldives
This has become a bit of a February tradition for me. Every February, I like to write some travel post that allows me to dream of warmer climes. So I’m reaching back to reminisce about a trip almost five years ago to the Indian Ocean paradise of the Maldives. This has been a mild winter…
Read MoreA political writer by default
“If you live in a country where politics are oppressive and you write—or try to write—you can’t avoid being a political writer.” —Josef Škvorecký Insightful words from Czech author relocated to Canada, Josef Škvorecký. I read a lot of Škvorecký, in both English and Czech, when I was living and working in Prague after the…
Read MoreGdansk’s stunning Długi Targ and Ulica Długa
A few months ago I made my first visit to the northern Polish city of Gdansk. The city is beautiful, and a walk around the city center allows you to admire the spectacular architecture. Nowhere is the richness more on display than the central streets of Długi Targ and Ulica Długa. Długi Targ begins from…
Read MoreBook review: Park Avenue Summer
I enjoyed White Collar Girl, an earlier Renée Rosen novel I read, so I was interested when I saw Park Avenue Summer. This is the story of 1960s Manhattan, and a new generation of young women working to carve out lives and careers for themselves in the Big Apple. Alice Weiss is a young woman…
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