The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Hiob (Job, the Story of a Simple Man). This is a modern (late 19th/early20th century) updating of the story of the Biblical Job, whom God made suffer, in order to test him. Our Job is Mendel Singer, a Russian Jew, living in Zuchnow, a fictitious town … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zsuzsa Selyem‘s Moszkvában esik (It’s Raining in Moscow). This is a series of interrelated stories concerning the Beczásy family, who were driven out of Armenia and settled in what was then Hungary, but in the last century changed hands three times and is now in Romania. Aided by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Serre‘s Voyage avec Vila-Matas [Journey with Vila-Matas]. This is quirky novel about a woman author, clearly based on Serre herself, attending a literary festival and ruminating/fantasising about Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas. She imagines he is there on her journey and at the festival and thinks about the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miljenko Jergović‘s Dvori od oraha (Walnut Mansion). This novel follows the story of the entire life of Regina Delavale, who lives ninety-seven years, from 1905 to 2002. However, Jergović has opted to tell it back-to-front, i.e. starting with her death and ending the novel with her birth. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Don DeLillo‘s The Silence. This is an-the-end-of-the-world-may-be-nearer-than-you-think novel. Two couples and a solo man are to meet to watch the Superbowl on 6 February 2022. The first two are flying back from Paris and their plane has to make a crash landing, though they have only minor injuries. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Katja Perat‘s Mazohistka (The Masochist). The novel is narrated by Nadezhda von Moser. She was found as a baby, abandoned, in a basket by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man whom Richard von Krafft-Ebing named masochism after. Sacher-Masoch brought her up but he was neither a good father or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alonso Cueto‘s La viajera del viento (The Wind Traveller). This is about the Peruvian war against Shining Path guerrillas and the consequences of that war. Ángel was in the army fighting the guerrillas at that time. He is ordered to dispose of the bodies of alleged guerillas tortured … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juan José Saer‘s El limonero real (The Regal Lemon Tree). the character in this book – an extended family celebrating New Year’s Eve – live on a series of interconnected islands. The main character, Wenceslao, is married to an unnamed woman. They lost their only son some six … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o‘s Kenda Mũiyũru (The Perfect Nine). This is not a novel but a blank verse recounting of the origin myth of the Kikuyu people (Ngũgĩ’s people). Ngũgĩ claimed to have a revelation about it so though it is based on the actual Kikuyu origin myth, it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mario Bellatin‘s El jardín de la señora Murakami (Mrs. Murakami’s Garden). This is nominally a story about a Japanese woman who wants to make an academic career which, for various reasons, goes wrong and she ends up marrying a much older man, whose art collection she had earlier … Read more