tmn The latest addition to my website is Antal Szerb‘s A Pendragon-legenda (The Pendragon Legend). Szerb’s first novel is a wonderful romp, with a complicated plot involving a thirty-two year old Hungarian intellectual, living in England and getting caught up in a plot involving eccentric (if not mad) English, Welsh, Irish and German characters, with ghosts, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is George Seferis‘ Έξι νύχτες στην Ακρόπολη (Six Nights on the Acropolis). Seferis won the Nobel Prize for his poetry. This was his only completed novel and it is easy to see why he owed his success to his poetry rather than to his novel-writing. It imitates the French … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Ампир В (Empire V). This is the usual Pelevin post-modern satire on Russia and its ruling class but takes as its basis the idea of vampires. That the Russian ruling class (and, indeed, other ruling classes) are vampires is not, perhaps, a terribly original idea but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is James Salter‘s Solo Faces, a novel about mountain-climbing. We first meet Vernon Rand as a roofer in California but we soon learn that his passion is mountain-climbing. Much of the novel is set in the French Alps where Rand will go mountain climbing, initially with others and then, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s S.N.U.F.F. (S.N.U.F.F.). This is another glorious post-modern romp through Russia and its foibles and, indeed, lots of other places and things and their foibles, which Pelevin inevitably mercilessly mocks. It is set in the future where the two main countries are Big Byz(antion), clearly based on … Read more
The latest addition to my website is James Salter‘s Light Years. This is a very well-written but ultimately rather gloomy tale of failed relationships and failed lives. Viri and Nedra are seemingly happily married, living in a nice house in upstate New York with their two daughters. He is an architect. She likes to go … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Thea Astley‘s The Well Dressed Explorer. The eponymous well-dressed explorer is George Brewster who, when a young teenager falls in love with Nita. Nita is happy to play along but also wants to enjoy herself and not just with George. He hovers around her, returning even when his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jaan Kross‘s Vastutuulelaev: Bernhard Schmidti roman (Sailing Against the Wind). This is a superb novelised biography of Bernhard Schmidt – despite his name and the Wikipedia article, an Estonian – who invented various things, including, in particular, sophisticated astronomical telescopes and the boat that sailed against the wind … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mouloud Mammeri‘s L’Opium et le Bâton [Opium and the Stick]. This novel reflects Mammeri’s own experiences in the FLN. It is an exciting story of a remote village, Tala, and four siblings from that village and how they react to the French occupation. The youngest, Ali, has joined … Read more
English PEN’s PEn Presents Initiative has had the excellent idea of presenting a list of six books, which are all very worthy but have not been translated into English (yet). The six are Ilva Fabiani, an Italian novelist, Kristien Dieltiens, a Belgian young adult novelist, Antonio Orejudo, a Spanish novelist, Ulrike Almut Sandig, a German … Read more