Von Wien nach Baghdad

Gestern Abend habe ich die Kurzkrimis ausgelesen, die durchwegs in Wiener Kaffeehäusern spielen. Auch das Lieblingscafe von Robert, das Café Ritter in Ottakring wurde erwähnt. Generell lese ich ja nur wenig Literatur aus Österreich, aber diese Krimis haben mir gut gefallen, und Edith Kneifl (die Herausgeberin und Verfasserin einer Geschichte) mag ich ja immer gerne.

Heute Abend beginne ich dann eine Reise nach Baghdad und London, und zwar mit diesem Buch:

Bee ROWLATT
May WITWIT
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad

The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship

Product Description: "Would you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?"

May’s a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She’s also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi’ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to reach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls. Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.

They should have nothing in common.

But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they also hatch an ingenious plan to help May escape the bombings of Baghdad .