An Evil Cradling (by Brian Keenan)

Although I probably heard the name of Brian Keenan in the late 1980s when he was a hostage in Lebanon, it’s not a name I recalled. I would almost certainly never have come across his book - nor picked it up if I had spotted it somewhere - if it weren’t for a reading group I joined recently. Their aim is to read books outside our usual preferred genres, and, where possible, to choose books written in different cultures.

This month, the first meeting after the Cyprus lockdown, the choice was K...