The latest addition to my website is Nuruddin Farah‘s Sardines. This is similar to many of his other novels in that we have a brave person, in this case a woman called Medina, who stands up to the brutal repression from the General/President, the tribal system and the old-fashioned and repressive Islamic law. She is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mirta Yáñez‘s Sangra por la herida (Bleeding Wound). This an excellent Cuban novel, narrated by twelve different narrators, most of whom live in the Alamar district of Havana. While the stories are often set in the 1990s, several of the older characters tell their stories from the period … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ El mal de Montano (Montano’s Malady). This a wonderfully post-modern novel, following on from Bartleby y compañía (Bartleby & Co.), a romp through modern (primarily European and Latin American) literature and narrated by the father of the author of the book in Bartleby y compañía (Bartleby … Read more
The Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize has announced its longlist. Here is what they say about it: This diverse group of books has been chosen by the judges as they display the flair, range and literary rigour abounding in British writing today and should, the judges believe, be widely read. In a nation reeling from the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Inês Pedrosa‘s Fazes-me Falta [I Miss You]. This is a superb novel, which consists entirely of fifty small chapters, divided into two. The first part of the chapter is a woman talking, the second part a man talking. It soon becomes apparent that they are former lovers and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Verre Cassé (Broken Glass), another colourful and lively novel from the Congolese author. In this novel, the narrator is called Broken Glass – we never know his real name – and he seems to spend most of his time in a bar called, simply, Credit. The … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yambo Ouologuem‘s Le Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence). This novel was hailed on publication as, unlike previous African novels, it did not show pre-colonial Africa as a wonderful place but, rather, as subject to violence, brutality, slavery, cruelty, incest, pedophilia, ill-treatment of women and many other ills. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic‘s Gotická duše (Gothic Soul). This is Czech Decadence at its best, a response to or, more likely, a homage to J K Huysmans’ classic decadent novel, À rebours (Against the Grain). The unnamed narrator, last scion of a distinguished family, with only a few … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sophie Cooke‘s Under The Mountain, her second and most recent novel. This is another fine novel by the very much underrated Cooke. This is a novel somwhat reminsicent of The Go-Between, in that it involves a child, sick in bed, during the summer holiday, who witnesses a key … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Lumières de Pointe-Noire (The Lights of Pointe-Noire). This is a fictionalised autobiography following from his earlier Demain j’aurai vingt ans (Tomorrow I’ll be Twenty). It tells primarily of his return to the Congo twenty-six years after he left, his mourning for his mother, Pauline and, to … Read more