The latest addition to my website is Sándor Márai‘s Szabadulás [Liberation]. This novel is set during the siege of Budapest at the end of World War II as the Russians attack and the Germans and their Hungarian allies defend. Our heroine is Elisabeth. Her father is wanted by the Germans and their Hungarian allies, Arrow … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Henri Calet‘s La Belle Lurette [A Long Time Ago]. This is a grim autobiographical novel about a boy, born in 1900. His parents are both criminals (money forging, prostitution, petty theft). His father is violent, frequently hitting his mother before running off with her daughter from a previous … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Artem Chekh‘s Точка нуль (Absolute Zero). This is an account of Chekh’s time serving in the Ukrainian army during the War in Donbass when separatists, aided by Russia, tried to take over Eastern Ukraine. Though we do not see any actual fighting, the men are always ready and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Suzanne Brøgger‘s Jadekatten (Jade Cat). This is the family saga of the Løvin family, a Danish-Jewish highly dysfunctional family. The focus is on the three later generations, with the first two generations having to cope with World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Germans and the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hervé Le Tellier‘s L’Anomalie (The Anomaly). We follow the stories of various different and seemingly unconnected people, till we gradually learn that they were all on a Paris-New York flight in 2021. The flight was caught in a storm and badly buffeted but eventually came out with only … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die hundert Tage (The Ballad of the Hundred; later: The Hundred Days). This novel tells the story of Napoleon’s hundred days. i.e. from when he fled Elba to his defeat at Waterloo and surrender to the British. The book was criticised when it first appeared in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Serre‘s Les Gouvernantes (The Governesses). This is very much a post-modern French fairy tale. The austere Austeur family engage three governesses, firstly to look after their four boys and secondly because M. Austeur wants a bit of chaos in his life, which he does not get from … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Javier Cercas‘ El monarca de las sombras (Lord of All Dead). This is another non-fiction novel from Cercas, as he sets out to find the true story about his great-uncle, Manuel Mena, who fought for the wrong side, i.e. Franco, in the Spanish Civil War. Most of those … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zakhar Prilepin‘s Обитель (The Monastery). This novel tells the story of Artiom Gorianov who is a prisoner in the 1920s in the remote Solovki prison camp. Initially we do not know why he is there but we later learn that he is not a political prisoner but has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sigrid Undset‘s Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken (The Axe (Part 1) The Snake Pit (Part 2); later: Olav Audunssøn. 1. Vows). This a new translation of the classic 1925 novel by the Nobel Prize winner, set in the late thirteenth century. Olav Audunssøn is fostered to a family when … Read more