If, twelve months ago, you had said that Donald Trump would be elected as US President, the UK would vote to leave the EU, Theresa May would become prime minister of the UK, Bob Dylan would win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Leicester City would win the English Premiership and the Chicago Cubs would win … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Saud Alsanousi‘s لبامبو (The Bamboo Stalk), the first Kuwaiti novel on my website. It tells the story of José/Isa, son of a Filpina woman and a Kuwaiti man. Josephine, José’s mother, goes to Kuwait to work, to escape her difficult father, traumatised after his involvement in the Vietnam … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Jablonka‘s Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes [Laetitia or the End of Men]. This is not really a novel but it has been sold as a novel in France and won prizes for novels so here it is. It recounts the true story of Laëtitia Perrais, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wright Morris‘s The Field of Vision. It tells the story of a disparate group of people who are attending a bullfight in Mexico and whose back-stories we learn as the bullfight progresses. Walter McKee, but invariably called McKee, has always looked up to Gordon Boyd, who has had … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Koen Peeters‘ Grote Europese roman [Great European Novel]. This is a tongue-in-cheek novel that may be many things but is not the Great European Novel. Our hero is Robin, working for a Belgian firm n Brussels which makes gadgets (we know no more about it). Robin is in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Colline (Hill of Destiny; later: Hill). This is Giono’s first novel and is rightly considered a classic of French literature. It tells the story of a remote and isolated hamlet in Provence, with only thirteen inhabitants. The oldest inhabitant, a cantankerous old man called Janet, is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juli Zeh‘s Schilf (UK: Dark Matter; US: In Free Fall). This is a novel where theoretical physics meets the detective story. Two theoretical physicists – Oskar and Sebastian – have been firm friends since meeting physics class at university, though the friendship is no longer as strong as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Santiago Gamboa‘s Necrópolis (Necropolis). This is one of the two of his novels that has been translated into English. The narrator, known only as EH, is a Colombian writer just recovering from a long, serious illness, who is invited to a conference held by the International Congress on … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Norman Manea‘s Plicul negru (The Black Envelope), the last novel Manea published in Romania before emigrating to the United States. It tells the story of Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov, better known as Tolea, during the bleak period of in Romanian history in the early 1980s. Tolea has been … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juli Zeh‘s Nullzeit (Decompression). This novel tells the story of a diving instructor, Sven. He has fled Germany, after realising he does not want to be a lawyer, accompanied by his girlfriend, Antje, ten years his junior. For fourteen years, they have now had a successful diving business. … Read more