The latest addition to my website is Dubravka Ugrešić‘s Ministarstvo boli (The Ministry of Pain). This is a (semi-)autobiographical novel about a Croatian woman, Tanja Lucić, who has left Croatia and is now resident in the Netherlands. Her former boyfriend has taken a job in Japan and she has decided not to accompany him. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivo Andrić‘s Omerpaša Latas (Omer Pasha Latas: Marshal to the Sultan). This is one of Andrić’s later novels, set in Bosnia like most of his novels, only just published in English for the first time. It tells of the repression of rebellion in Bosnia in the Ottoman Empire, … Read more
It was interesting to see in Today’s Observer, an article on William Melvin Kelley and, moreover, claiming his A Different Drummer is a lost literary masterpiece. The book has been on my site since the beginning and I read him many years ago. More interesting is his book Dunford’s Travels Everywheres (yes, it is everywheres … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Winter. This is the second novel in her seasonal tetralogy. It tells the story of a dysfunctional family. The oldest sister, Iris, has strong left-wing views and is thrown out of the house by her father. Sophia, her younger sister, behaves and is responsible and goes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mo Yan‘s 酒国 (The Republic of Wine). This is a chaotic, alcohol-fuelled story about excesses in China, particularly alcohol and sex. We follow two stories, which will merge. The first involves crack investigator Ding Gou’er of the Higher Procuratorate, who is sent to investigate allegations that local mine … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Emmanuel Carrère‘s Un roman russe (My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir). Though the English calls it a memoir – and, to a great extent it is – it is written as a novel, called a novel by the author and the publisher and reads as a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Haruki Murakami‘s 騎士団長殺し (Killing Commendatore). This is the usual Murakami, with a lone hero (a portrait painter by profession), trying to solve a mystery (or, in this case, several, possibly interrelated, mysteries), having to cope with the supernatural and helped by a strange but resilient girl (and, in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Germán Sierra‘s The Artifact. Sierra is a Spanish neuroscientist but this book was written in English, though his previous novels were written in Spanish. It is essentially a novel and treatise on the future of the species, dealing with artificial intelligence, quasi-life forms, new technologies and how we … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ersi Sotiropoulos‘ Τι μενει απο τη νυχτα (What’s Left of the Night). The novel tells of three days in June 1897 spent by Greek poet C(onstantine) P Cavafy and his older brother, John. The family has fallen on hard times, so money is tight. Cavafy himself struggles with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Christoph Ransmayr‘s Cox oder Der Lauf der Zeit [Cox or the Course of Time]. The hero of this book is Alister Cox, based on the very real James Cox. Unlike James Cox, Alister Cox travels to China to build clocks for the Chinese Emperor Qianlong. Qianlong is not … Read more