tmn The latest addition to my website is Jaroslav Kalfar‘s Spacemen of Bohemia. Kalfar was born in Prague but moved to the US when he was fifteen and wrote this novel in English. It is about Jakub Procházka, the first Czech astronaut (in 2018), who is sent into space to investigate a mysterious purple cloud between … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Coover‘s Huck Out West. This is another wonderfully post-modern, iconoclastic, very funny book from Robert Coover. It tells the story of Huckleberry Finn and, to a certain degree, of Tom Sawyer, when they become adults and head out to the Wild West. Finn remains the loveable but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Aminata Sow Fall‘s La Grève des bàttu (The Beggars’ Strike). This is a mocking satire on officialdom in Senegal (though neither the country nor the city where it takes place are named). The city, presumably, Dakar, is overrun with beggars and the public health department is given the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Michel Miniussi‘s Lei Passatemps [The Pastimes]. Though born in Paris, Miniussi grew up in Cannes and became a very great supporter of Occitan literature. Sadly, he died at the age of thirty-six. This book, like some of his others, was published posthumously. It is an unusual book for … Read more
For EU countries, the United States and many other countries, copyright on published works is normally in existence till seventy years after the death of the author. Some countries have different copyright rules, as this article shows. Interestingly enough, France has a Mort pour la France category. What this means is that for members of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sarah Hall‘s The Wolf Border. This is another superb novel from Sarah Hall and it is, of course, about wolves. Rachel Caine works with wolves on the Nez Perce reservation. She is around forty and single, though she has had many a casual affairs, just as her mother … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Albahari‘s Pijavice (Leeches). The novel is set in Belgrade, where Albahari used to live before emigrating to Canada.The novel is decidedly chaotic. It starts off with our unnamed narrator, a translator, who also writes a weekly column for a local magazine, sometimes on contentious issues. He sees … Read more
If, twelve months ago, you had said that Donald Trump would be elected as US President, the UK would vote to leave the EU, Theresa May would become prime minister of the UK, Bob Dylan would win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Leicester City would win the English Premiership and the Chicago Cubs would win … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Saud Alsanousi‘s لبامبو (The Bamboo Stalk), the first Kuwaiti novel on my website. It tells the story of José/Isa, son of a Filpina woman and a Kuwaiti man. Josephine, José’s mother, goes to Kuwait to work, to escape her difficult father, traumatised after his involvement in the Vietnam … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Jablonka‘s Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes [Laetitia or the End of Men]. This is not really a novel but it has been sold as a novel in France and won prizes for novels so here it is. It recounts the true story of Laëtitia Perrais, who … Read more