Marina Boterashvili recommends
Marina Boterashvili is a Partner in Quinn Emanuel’s London office. She specialises in complex litigation and arbitration, with an emphasis on civil fraud, financial litigation and joint venture and shareholder disputes.
Read on to find out which six books Marina recommends, and why…
“My book shelves are almost exclusively made up of fiction. Or rather, my share of the book shelves, as my husband reads almost exclusively non-fiction. As a lawyer, I spend most of my days reading and writing rather dry content, so it is perhaps unsurprising that when I read for leisure, I like to read human stories, which, although fictionalised, feel more ‘real-life’. Whilst I have thrown in one piece of non-fiction, it does not feel like a real exception to my usual reading list.”
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
A beautifully written story about growing up, identity, friendship, failure, and love, through the prism of friends who create a video game together. I devoured this in one day.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
The story of a young sailor, falsely accused of treason, who seeks revenge on those who wronged him. A classic tale of adventure and retribution, which navigates themes of justice, betrayal, and redemption. I have lost count (excuse the pun) of the number of times I have read this book, and I keep coming back to it.
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
A multi-generational story of a Korean family in Japan, this book explores the immigrant experience, sacrifice and the human pursuit of belonging, against the backdrop of real-life historic events. It gripped me right from the start, and I am now thoroughly enjoying re-living the story through AppleTV’s screen adaptation (although the book is always better).
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson
A very dear friend often jokes that my favourite literary genre is what he has coined as ‘alt fiction’: human stories, grounded in real life historical events, but which imagine different outcomes depending on choices made by the main protagonists. I have no idea if this is a recognised category in the literary world, but this novel by Kate Atkinson would be a perfect example: each time the protagonist dies, she is reborn into the same life, and has the option to alter her fate. Atkinson’s prose is captivating and she manages to weave multiple timelines in a way that makes the book impossible to put down.
Jerusalem
Simon Sebag Montefiore
An exception to an otherwise very fiction-heavy list: anything by Simon Sebag Montefiore, but Jerusalem, in particular. Starting from ancient times and through to (nearly) the present day, he vividly describes the tumultuous (and bloody) history of the holy city through the diverse cast of characters and stories that have shaped the city.
The Human Stain
Philip Roth
I knew that I wanted to include at least one Roth novel, but picking my favourite was the hardest. Set in the late 20th century, The Human Stain tells the story of Coleman Silk – a professor involved in a scandal that makes us question our sense of morality, identity and societal expectations.