The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Méduses (The Madman and the Medusa). The novel is set in Tchicaya U Tam’si’s home town of Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo in June 1944. At the beginning of the novel, in the same week but not on the same day, two men die … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Attila Bartis‘ A vége (The End) This is a monumental semi-autobiographical novel, telling the story of Andras Szabad from his birth during the war to the post-communist era. The book opens when his father, also called Andras Szabad, is released from prison after serving three years for his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 余白の愛 [Love at the Margin]. Our unnamed heroine/narrator has suddenly had serious hearing problems . We learn later that her husband had left her the day before. From her room in the F clinic, she can see an old hotel and, two later, she will be … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karmele Jaio‘s Aitaren etxea (My Father’s House). This is a Basque feminist novel. We start with Ismael Alberdi, a succesful novelist who is struggling with his latest novel, not least because he is writing about the troubled period of the 1980s in the Basque country, which he kept … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Harald Voetmann‘s Alt under månen (Sublunar). The book follows part of the life of Tycho Brahe, allegedly the last great astronomer before the invention of the telescope. He is observing and mapping the night sky from his castle in Scania (now in Sweden). However around him,the world has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rosemary Tonks‘s The Bloater. This is a quirky comedy of manners. The heroine/narrator is Min who is married to George, with whom she hardly seems to have any contact. She is pursued by a much older man whom she prefers to keep as a friend and, during the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Guillaume Lecasble‘s Lobster (Lobster). We follow the story of a lobster who, along with his parents, is caught and placed in an aquarium in a restaurant. His parents are cooked but just as he is placed in the pot, there is a huge bang and the pot is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miki Liukkonen‘s O [O]. Liukkonen, who died in June 2023 aged thirty three, has written a monumental novel (novel)858 pages) in the Finnish original and 961 in the French translation which I read), set in Helsinki in 2013 about a cast of over a hundred characters all of … Read more
You do not need me to tell you that the economics of publishing literary fiction are difficult but, I hope you do not need me to tell that there are a whole slew of publishers in the UK and US, but also elsewhere, publishing superb works of fiction, usually on a shoestring. A couple of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Langley‘s Arkady. This is a dystopian novel in a country that is much like Britain. Indeed, it was published five years ago and is looking more prescient today. Two young boys – Jackson and Frank – are on holiday in Spain with their parents. Their mother disappears … Read more