The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s Arrogance, another superb novel by Scott, this one being about the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, who died aged twenty-eight during the influenza pandemic at the end of World War I. Schiele was not a man to observe conventional morality and was in trouble with local communities … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Xiaolu Guo‘s 我心中的石头镇 (Village of Stone). She is one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. This novel was the last of several that she wrote in Chinese and the only one of those that has been translated into English. Her subsequent novels have been written in English. It … Read more
The latest addition to my website is François Mauriac‘s La Fin de la nuit (The End of the Night). This is a follow-up to his Thérèse Desqueyroux (Therese; later: Therese Desqueyroux), written eight years earlier. In his introduction, Mauriac makes it clear he wanted to continue the story of Thérèse. It is now fifteen years … Read more
The latest addition to my website is A. M. Homes‘ Jack, her first novel. It is certainly an enjoyable novel, though the humour is not nearly as black as her recent prize-winning May We Be Forgiven. Jack, the hero/narrator, is a fifteen-year old boy, whose parents get divorced and who subsequently discovers that the reason … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marcu Biancarelli‘s Pegasi astru virtuali (51 Pegasi, astre virtuel) [51 Pegasi, Virtual Star], the first Corsican novel on my site. Frankly, it is not a very good novel. The narrator, Marco, is a writer/professor, who has left Corsica for ten years and, when he returns, Corsica has become … Read more
I do not subscribe to many magazines but one I read avidly is La Quinzaine littéraire. It has been edited and published by the first-class publisher, Maurice Nadeau, since 1966. It is currently facing financial difficulties and Nadeau has been fighting to save it. Sadly he died yesterday, aged 102, fighting for his magazine till … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Szalay‘s The Innocent. Szalay is another of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. This novel is written from the perspective of a committed MGB (precursor to the KGB) agent, Aleksandr, who Szalay cleverly makes us think of as a reasonable person, despite his firm commitment to the Soviet … Read more
The other day we went to an exhibition of the superb paintings of the very wonderful Anne-Catherine Phillips. We have two of her paintings in our house and would have more if we had bigger walls! As we were leaving, the owner of the house told us that Charles Doughty used to live there. Doughty … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Peter Handke‘s Kali [Potash]. This book, which has not been translated into English (though has been translated into Danish, Dutch, French and Italian), is another of Handke’s almost dream-like stories of an individual travelling to a strange land which may be, in fact, Handke’s view of Austria. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Roegiers‘ Le Bonheur des Belges [The Happiness of the Belgians]. It is both a response to Hugo Claus‘ Het verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium) as well as to the political and economic crisis Belgium has been facing in recent times. Belgium is the only country … Read more