Wim Tigges on Crime & Dickens Charles Dickens was fascinated with crime, and in particular with punishment. These are at least subsidiary themes in all of his novels and in many short stories, where petty and great criminals occur in plenty, from deceitful Mr. Jingle in The Pickwick Papers to the alleged murderer John Jasper […]
Our June Book of the Month is Eleanor Shearer’s debut novel River Sing Me Home. In Barbados of 1834, a slave called Rachel is told she is free. Reality proves to be different, however, and she flees her plantation to search for the five children taken from her and sold. Rachel traverses across the Caribbean […]
The Art of Making a Forgotten Cup of Tea by Faizah Muhammad. Open Book Club, sessions in English, please sign up: bookclub@mayflowerbookshop.nl
Next in our Great Crime series: Louis Smit on Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (lecture in Dutch) The fifth lecture in Mayflower Bookshop’s Great Crime series will be given by Louis Smit on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This lecture, given in Dutch, will explore crime in Russian literature. In this novel, published in 1866, a […]
From September 4 to 6, Mayflower Bookshop hosts a Pride Book Fair in the Catharinasteeg during the Leiden Canal Parade. Visitors can browse a selection of LGBTQ+ classics and new books by and for the queer community, in both English and Dutch. The book fair is a collaboration with De Queer Boekenkast from Alkmaar and […]
The sixth lecture in Mayflower Bookshop’s Great Crime series will be given by Coco Hoek. Her lecture, in Dutch, will examine that greatest of all French fictional detectives, Commissaire Maigret. But not just Maigret! She will give an introduction to the life of his creator, Georges Simenon, and take a close look at one of […]
Open Book Club, sessions in English – please sign up per session: bookclub@mayflowerbookshop.nl
First session of our Queer Book Club We read Oranges are not the only fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Open book club, sessions in English
Open Book Club, sessions in English - please sign up per session: bookclub@mayflowerbookshop.nl
“Banned books Are the only books that truly live.” Nâzim Hikmet’s passionate plea for the banned book (see our Poem of the Month) will leave no-one unmoved. It was spread around on Facebook during Banned Books Week, an event that got attention all over the internet as well as in our Leiden public library which […]
We read Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Who really invented the first motion picture camera, and what happened to him? In Light and Shadow, Laurel Avery explores the mysterious disappearance of Augustin Le Prince, who filmed the world’s first moving picture in 1888. Blending meticulous historical research with compelling storytelling, this captivating novel delves into ambition, hidden secrets and the price we […]