The latest addition to my website is Thomas Pynchon‘s Bleeding Edge. This novel continues with Pynchon’s obsession with conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies. It is set at the turn of the millennium, so includes conspiracies about 9/11 and, as you can imagine, it is not Al-Qaida who gets the blame. It tells the story of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mario Vargas Llosa‘s El héroe discreto [The Discreet Hero]. This is his latest novel, which has yet to be translated into English, though will undoubtedly appear in English before long. Amazingly, it is already out in German. It is not one of his great works but one of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Clemens Meyer‘s Im Stein [In Stone]. This book has been much discussed in Germany for its controversial depiction of a fictitious East German city, focussing on the underbelly of the city. The key element is prostitution and Meyer gives us a vivid description of the prostitutes themselves, their … Read more
Following on from my post on Monday, the Man Booker Prize now confirms that the Prize is open to all writers writing in English, as expected. However, it now seems – and this is not 100% clear – that publishers can submit one novel as well as proposing other novels for the judges to consider, … Read more
The latest additions to my website are two books by Ruth Ozeki. The first is My Year of Meats, a very witty and somewhat polemic attack on various things – sexism, racism, the US obsession with guns and, in particular, the meat industry. It tells two stories of two women in parallel. The first, clearly … Read more
I have been following with interest this weekend the furore over the rumour that the Man Booker will open its eligibility to all novels originally written in English published in UK during the eligibility period (currently 1 October to 30 September) which essentially means allowing US authors to participate. My breakfast copy of The Independent, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hans Henny Jahnn‘s Das Holzschiff (The Ship). This is the first book in an incomplete trilogy, with the second book, meant only to provide a tenth chapter to the first one, ending up as 1600 pages. Only this one has been translated into English. Though long since out … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Daniel Kehlmann‘s F, a superb new novel from Kehlmann about family, fate, faking and forgery and various other F-words (but, no, not that one). It concerns two twins, Iwan and Eric, their half-brother, Martin, and their father, Arthur. The twins only meet Martin for the first time when … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rodney Hall‘s Yandilli trilogy. The trilogy consists of three novels, all set in the fictitious settlement of Yandilli, in New South Wales. The novels are set thirty years apart – with the first in 1838, the second in 1868 and the third in 1898. The first chronologically – … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Berdi Kerbabaev‘s Aĭgytly ădim (Der entscheidende Schritt) [The Decisive Step], the first novel from Turkmenistan on my site and a book written in Turkmen, translated into Russian and thence into German. It is a fairly conventional Soviet novel, with our hero, Ardyk, a somewhat downtrodden peasant. His father … Read more