The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Quin Again. Though subtitled and other stories, it reads as a novel as all but one of the stories is about the same character, albeit with a different name on a couple of occasions. He is Elijah Doodles McMaster aka Douglas Moog. He is a habitual … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s To Wetumpka. This is, inevitably, another experimental novel from Sharp, with a bleak view of the contemporary world, albeit touched with some humour. Clifford Tollinger has decided to escape from London and go the dreary seaside town of Lowestoft, on the East coast of England. One … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anak Agung Pandji Tisna‘s Sukreni Gadis Bali (The Rape of Sukreni), the first Balinese novel on my website. Men Negara owns a food stall in a small Balinese village and uses her very attractive daughter, Ni Negari, to attract male customers. The police chief, Madé Tusan, who has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ El viaje vertical [The Vertical Voyage], one of his books that has yet to be translated into English though it has been translated into Catalan, Chinese, Hebrew and Norwegian. This is very different from his usual novels, in that it has few literary references and fewer … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ Historia abreviada de la literatura portátil (A Brief History of Portable Literature). This novel (?) follows a format similar to several of his other works, in that he takes a literary idea – in this case portable literature – and sets off on a bizarre and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lesia Daria‘s Forty One. This is a novel by a woman born in the USA, of Ukrainian parents but currently living in the UK. Her heroine, Eva Holden, is, however, Polish, albeit with Ukrainian grandparents and living in the UK. Eva is an intelligent and educated woman but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Burning Grass, a well-written and lively novel about a Fulani family in Nigeria. The patriarch, Mai, is afflicted with the wandering sickness, which means that, without warning or being able to stop himself, he suddenly disappears, wandering about, often chasing a bird. During his wanderings, he … Read more
Jonathan Coe‘s novels apparently sell better in France. Coe claims that British people can see how current politics is impacting on the country every day in the papers and on TV rather than look for it in his novels. Ignoring his rather dubious grammar, I would argue that Coe is one of those English writers … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Claude Ollier‘s Déconnection (later: Obscuration) (Disconnection). Ollier was one of the French writers associated with Editions de Minuit and the nouveau roman but he drifted away from them and set his own course. This novel consists of two stories told in parallel which may or may not be … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Herta Müller‘s Herztier (The Land of Green Plums). This is a remorselessly grim story of life in Ceausescu’s Romania, told by an unnamed female narrator. At the beginning of the book, she is sharing a room at college with five other young women, including Lola. Much of what … Read more