The latest addition to my website is Sebastiano Vassalli‘s La chimera (The Chimera). Set in Italy at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, this is a novel about witchcraft or, rather, it isn’t, it is about a young woman accused of witchcraft for the very simple crimes of a) being … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marina Warner‘s The Leto Bundle. This is a superb novel about identity, refugees, immigration, religion, the effect of war and political upheaval, particularly on women, as well, of course, as we would expect from Marina Warner, about myth and its role both in the past and for us … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s De Potter’s Grand Tour. There has been some excitement this summer with all the new novels coming out late summer/autumn. These include novels by Martin Amis, Peter Carey, Michel Faber, Richard Ford, Howard Jacobson, Kate Mosse, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Joseph O’Neill, Marilynne Robinson, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chantal Spitz‘s L’île des rêves écrasés (Island of Shattered Dreams), the first novel written by a native Tahitian. Spitz originally wrote this novel as a testament for her children and it is a highly political novel. Though it tells the story of a Tahitian family (though one with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Haruki Murakami‘s 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年 (Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage). This book has had mixed reviews but, though it is not your standard Murakami (and shorter than some of his recent ones) I still enjoyed it very much, not least because Murakami writes so well and tells … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Richard Flanagan‘s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This book has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize longlist for 2014. The book concerns the construction of the Burma Railway by the Japanese, using forced labour, during World War II and tells the story of a contingent … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wilson Harris‘ The Guyana Quartet. This consists of four relatively short novels, all set in the Guyana jungle, and it is generally considered Harris’ masterpiece. The first novel, Palace of the Peacock, is, in my view the best and tells of the journey of a motley crew of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Lihn‘s El arte de la palabra [The Way of Speaking]. Lihn was primarily a poet but he wrote five novels of which this is the best known. It concerns a literary conference on the fictional island of Miranda, which has been described as a cross between Chile … Read more
We spent the past week in the North of England, partially for family reasons but we also made a few literary jaunts. I have always wanted to visit Newstead Abbey so we stopped off there on the way up. Newstead Abbey was never an abbey but a priory. Following the dissolution of the monasteries under … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s The Makioka Sisters, one of the great Japanese novels. I have now read this novel three times and seen the film and it continues to give me great pleasure. It tells the story of four sisters, daughters of an old family, whose father had had considerable … Read more