The latest addition to my website is Roger Manderscheid‘s Feier a Flam [Fire and Flame]. Manderscheid was a Luxembourg writer and he wrote this book in Luxembourgish and then translated it himself into German. It is a Bildungsroman, the third part of a trilogy, with the first two books telling of the childhood of Christian … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Russell Celyn Jones‘ An Interference of Light. This novel tells two stories: one set in 1937-39 and one in 1959, both taking place in Sharon, a Welsh slate-quarrying community. It is narrated by Aaron Lewis, whose parents were from the Sharon area but who emigrated to the United … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fernanda Melchor‘s emporada de huracanes (Hurricane Season). The novel tells the story of a small Mexican town, La Matosa. At the beginning, the body of a woman known locally as The Witch, is found dead in a stream. The novel tells her story and that of her mother, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hilary Mantel‘s The Mirror and the Light, the brilliant conclusion to her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the adviser to Henry VIII. The novel starts and ends with two beheadings. It opens with the beheading of Anne Boleyn and ends with Cromwell’s own beheading, some four years later. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kim Sagwa‘s 나b책 (b, Book and Me). The novel tells the story of three Korean misfits, b, Book and Rang (the me of the title). Rang is badly bullied at school by the baseball boys. b’s family is very poor and she and Rang become friends till they … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s Riña de gatos (An Englishman in Madrid). Though unusually for Mendoza set in Madrid instead of Barcelona and environs, this book is his usual mockery of all and sundry, particularly the eponymous Englishman. He is Anthony Whitelands, a thirty something English art expert, specialising in Spanish … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mercè Rodoreda‘s Jardí vora el mar (Garden by the Sea). This is a beautiful book, narrated by the gardener to a summer residence, serving successive families. We follow him as he carefully and lovingly tends the plants and garden while the well-to-do – the owner and their guests … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s Remise de peine (Suspended Sentences). This short novel deals with Modiano’s usual themes, telling the story of two young boys, the older clearly based on Modiano himself, who are sent to stay with three women on the outskirts of Paris, while their parents are away travelling. … Read more
I have now read twenty Brazilian novels in a row by twenty different authors. The oldest one was first published in 1902, the most recent in 2014. Six of the novels were by women. This is the seventh years in a row I have done this and I am not running out of countries. Indeed, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Antônio Xerxenesky‘s F. It tells the story of Ana, a young Brazilian woman who travels to Los Angeles to meet her uncle, a former anti-Brazilian government guerrilla. He realises that she is a superb shot and has her trained with guerrillas in Cuba. She then becomes a contract … Read more