Western Sahara
The latest addition to my website is Abderrahman Budda Hamadi's Lágrimas de Alegría [Tears of Joy], a (not quite) novel from Western Sahara. I am not sure that there is…
Reading the World
When I first started my site, many years ago, it was not my intention to cover the world. My aim was to review (and therefore encourage others to read the…
Filmed novels
I recently read and posted on my site László Krasznahorkai's Sátántangó (Satantango). I had heard that famed Hungarian film-maker Béla Tarr had made a film of the book, which was…
Hesperus Press – Uncover a Classic competition
Hesperus Press publishes an interesting and quirky selection of writings, both fiction and non-fiction. They are now having an Uncover a Classic Competition which basically means they are asking the…
Novelists in Spanish
When I first started doing this site, many years ago, one of the many gaps in my education that I found was a knowledge of Spanish and Latin-American literature. Even…
The philosophical novel
I have come across two lists recently on this subject. If you have visited my site, you will know that I am a glutton for lists. Two new lists relating…
Hacked
Last week this blog was hacked, not once but twice. While writing my previous post, I noticed that everything was very, very slow, yet everything else on my computer was…
The English Eccentric
The English have something of a reputation for being eccentric. Dame Edith Sitwell famously wrote a book on the topic and there seems to be a more modern one as…
Ismail Kadare
I have recently read Ismail Kadare's Spiritus. It is the twenty-second of his novels that I have read and, I suspect, the most novels I have read by the same…
The Great British Novel
I have yet to read John Lanchester's Capital or, indeed, any of his other books, but will probably do so in the next few weeks. However, I was intrigued by…