The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 他人の顔 (The Face of Another). Our hero, a plastics engineer, is badly injured in an industrial accident, leaving his face badly scarred. People – even his wife – are repelled by him. He decides to develop a plastic mask and considers wearing the mask while accosting … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die Kapuzinergruft (The Emperor’s Tomb). This was the last novel he published in his lifetime, when he was living in exile, after the Nazis had annexed Austria. He died the following year. It is a sad and gloomy tale focussing on Franz Ferdinand Trotta, cousin of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mateiu Caragiale‘s . This is a new translation of a novel voted the best Romanian novel by a poll of Romanian readers. It follows a dissolute group of people who carouse, drink, gamble and whore in fin-de-siècle Bucharest in the area of the Old Court, a now much … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pat Barker‘s The Women of Troy. This follows on from Barker’s previous novel, The Silence of the Girls, where we followed the story of Briseis, a captured royal who became Achilles’ trophy. At the beginning of this novel, Achilles, rightly fearing his impending death, marries her off to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sasha Filipenko‘s Красный крест (Red Crosses). Sasha, a recently widowed young man moves to Minsk, where he buys a flat. He has one neighbour on the same floor – Tatyana Alexeyevna. Though she has Alzheimer’s, she tells him her story. She had worked in the Soviet Union during … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Abdulla Qadiri‘s Oʻtgan kunlar (Days Gone By). This is allegedly the first full-length Uzbek novel and tells the tale of a love story which does not go as planned as well as the political situation in the region (Tashkent, Khanate of Kokand) in the mid-nineteen century, which is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Premier sang [First Blood]. The book starts with a man facing a firing squad and moves to his childhood in an unconventional Belgian aristocratic family. We gradually realise that it is, in fact, the story of Nothomb’s father, Patrick, a diplomat who served in the former … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’s‘s Les Cancrelats [The Cockroaches]. The novel is set from 1902 to 1945 and primarily tells the story of two siblings – Sophie and Prosper, born in Côte d’Ivoire to an Ivorian mother, who dies soon after Prosper’s birth, and Congolese father. He takes them back … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rémy Ngamije‘s The Eternal Audience of One. Rémy Ngamije, like his hero Séraphin, was born in Rwanda. His family fled Rwanda during the Rwandan Civil War and ended up in Namibia via Kenya. Séraphin is, like a lot of young men, unsure of where he is going, feels … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Almudena Grandes‘ Los aires difíciles (The Wind from the East). Juan Olmero, a successful, unmarried orthopedic surgeon is moving from Madrid, with his his ten year old niece, Tamara, and his mentally handicapped brother, Alfonso to Jerez. Tamara’s parents have both died as the result of a car … Read more