Kathryn Davis: The Thin Place
The latest addition to my website is Kathryn Davis' The Thin Place, a brilliant but understated novel about spirituality, the forces of nature and the role they play in our…
Stratis Tsirkas: Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (Drifting Cities)
The latest addition to my website is Stratis Tsirkas' Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (Drifting Cities. This is a trilogy of novels, often compared to The Alexandria Quartet. Like that book, it takes…
Gafur Gulom: Shum bola [The Rascal
The latest addition to my website is Gafur Gulom's Shum bola [The Rascal, a light-hearted Uzbek novel which has been translated into German but not into English. This tells the…
N. Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn
The latest addition to my website is N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn. This was the first Native American novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. It tells a familiar…
Jenny Erpenbeck: Gehen, ging, gegangen [Go, Went, Gone]
The latest addition to my website is Jenny Erpenbeck's Gehen, ging, gegangen [Go, Went, Gone]. This is a very timely book, as it is about the refugee crisis and is,…
Rupert Thomson: Katherine Carlyle
The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson's Katherine Carlyle. Thomson's novels tend to be dark and are often concerned with people trying to escape. This one is no…
Saltire Literary Awards
The Saltire Society has announced its shortlist for its 2015 literary awards. While the fiction list has several of the usual suspects - Irvine Welsh, Kate Atkinson, the underrated Janice…
Leila S Chudori: Pulang (Home)
The latest addition to my website is Leila S Chudori's Pulang (Home). The novel tells the story of a group of Indonesians who are abroad in 1965, during the 1965…
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan
I have just returned from two weeks in Central Asia, which was highly enjoyable and a lifelong dream but, from the literary point of view relatively disappointing. I found only…
Enrique Vila-Matas: Exploradores del abismo [Explorers of the Abyss]
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas' Exploradores del abismo [Explorers of the Abyss]. This book is not a novel but, rather, a collection of linked short stories,…