The latest addition to my website is Maria Judite de Carvalho‘s Os Armários Vazios (Empty Wardrobes). The novel tells the story of Dora Rosário, who marries Duarte young and has a daughter . Duarte, however, is totally devoid of ambition, despite being pushed by a forceful mother, and has a low-paying job and will not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sarah Hall‘s Burntcoat. Our heroine is Edith Harknesss. We follow her life from when she was ten and her mother, a successful novelist, had an aneurysm but survived though much changed. Edith decides to become an artist, focussing on monumental works using shou sugi ban, a Japanese charred … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hanne Ørstavik‘s Presten (The Pastor). The eponymous pastor is Liv. She had worked in southern Germany where she had befriended Kristiane but when Kristiane killed herself, she had applied for and got a job in the far North of Norway. However, things do not go well, not least … Read more
Well, nobody expected that! I am glad to say that I have read three of Abdulrazak Gurnah‘s work and enjoyed it. It was, of course, about time an African won it though everyone expected it would be Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and not Gurnah. Anyway, congratulations to Abdulrazak Gurnah and to the Nobel Prize Committee for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Petra Hůlová‘s Stručné dějiny Hnutí (The Movement). This is a feminist dystopian novel. In this New World, men are sent to a institute – in some cases voluntarily but often at the instigation of their spouses or even simply snatched from the streets, where they are retrained – … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ana Schnabl‘s Mojstrovina (The Masterpiece). The novel is set primarily in 1985, five years after Tito’s death but with Slovenia still part of Yugoslavia and the communists in control. Adam, a university lecturer, has written a novel (called Masterpiece) which he has submitted to Ana, an editor at … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nabile Farès‘La Découverte du nouveau monde (Discovery of the New World). This is a trilogy of books first published French in the 1970s. Farès and his father were very much involved in the Algerian War of Independence but were very disappointed with the outcome, in particular the dictatorship … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sharov‘s Будьте как дети (Be As Children) . This is the third of Sharov’s novels to be translated into English and, in my view, the best. There are three main stories (and several sub-stories): the story of a noble woman who becomes a a Holy Fool, a … Read more
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The latest addition to my website is Sara Stridsberg‘s . This is one of those novels where the narrator is dead. Kristine, drug addict and prostitute, but also mother, sister and daughter, struggles with her life – both parents are drunks and her adored younger brother drowns when he was seven. Her only escape is … Read more