The latest addition to my website is Andrey Kurkov‘s Серые пчелы (Grey Bees). This a superb novel from Kurkov about a beekeeper, Sergeyich, who lives in a small village in the grey zone on the Ukrainian-Russian border. Post-2014, after the Russian occupation of Crimea, most people have moved away and there are only two people … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Xue Yiwei‘s 希拉里, 密和, 我 (Celia, Misoka, I). Our unnamed narrator is from China. He, his wife and daughter had migrated from China to Montreal, nominally to get a better education for the daughter. It had not worked out. The marriage was not happy and the wife could … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Javier Cercas‘Terra Alta (Even the Darkest Night). Cercas has now turned to crime novels – two more in this series have been published in Spanish. We are following a Spanish police officer – Melchor Marín – who had been a drug dealer for which he was sent to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fernanda Melchor‘s Paradais (Paradais). The novel is set in an exclusive gated community in Mexico. The sixteen-year old Polo has dropped out of school but his mother has forced him to take a job at Paradais, where he has to clean up, garden and keep the place tidy, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Alice in Venice. Alice Short is on holiday in Venice to visit the varioius sites where the film Don’t Look Now was filmed. She meets – maybe -a Frenchman called Alain who may be drug dealer, an assassin or an academic specialising in Henry Fielding or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Irwin‘s The Limits of Vision. Marcia is an English housewife seemingly obsessed with cleanliness. When her vacuum cleaner breaks down, just before her coffee morning guests arrive, she is confronted by Mucor the Fungus, the spokesperson for dirt. Once her guests arrive, admiring the Dutch painting of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adelle Stripe & Lias Saoudi‘s Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure. This book is a fictional biography and an alternative version of historic events about Fat White Family, a contemporary English rock/punk band. The book is told in the third person (presumably by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hassouna Mosbahi‘s الطلييتيم الدهر (Solitaire). Yunus is a Tunisian man who has just reached he age of sixty. He feels that his life is coming to an end. He is divorced. His country is, in his view, a mess and totally corrupt and so is the greater Arab … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eoghan Smith‘s A Provincial Death. Smyth, a researcher studying the Moon is clinging to a rock two-three kilometres off the coast of Ireland. Neither we nor he know why he is here. He gradually recovers his memory and we learn that his boss has predicted that the Moon … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hans von Trotha‘s Pollaks Arm (Pollak’s Arm). Ludwig Pollak was a very respected Jewish Austro-Czech classical archeologist and dealer, who spent much of his adult life in Rome and is best-known for finding the missing arm of the famous sculpture Laocoön and His Sons. This book recounts the … Read more