tmn The latest addition to my website is Norman Manea‘s Vizuina (The Lair). This is a superb novel about exile, focussing on four Romanian exiles but, in particular, Peter Gașpar. His father had been in Auschwitz, where his wife and daughter had been gassed. He had survived and met Eva, another survivor, and they married. Peter … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yamen Manai‘s La Sérénade d’Ibrahim Santos [The Serenade of Ibrahim Santos]. Though a Tunisian novel with clear references to the political situation in Tunisia (the book was written just before the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution of 2011), the book is actually set on a fictitious Spanish-speaking Caribbean island. Santa … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Max Aub‘s Campo de los almendros [Field of the Almond Trees], the sixth, last and by far the longest in his Magic Labyrinth series about the Spanish Civil War. The war is almost over at the start of this book, with the Republicans barely holding on to Valencia … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Leïla Slimani‘s Chanson douce [Sweet Song]. Slimani, born in Morocco and resident in France, won the Prix Goncourt for this novel. We know what happens from the first paragraph – two young children are brutally murdered and their apparent assailant who has tried but failed to kill herself, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Santiago Gamboa‘s Vida feliz de un joven llamado Esteban [Happy Life of a Young Man Called Esteban]. This is a quasi-autobiographical novel (i.e. told in an autobiographical style, with some autobiographical references). We follow the life of Esteban Hinestroza, a young man who is currently working as journalist … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gaël Faye‘s Petit pays [Little Country]. Gaël Faye was born in Burundi of a French father and a Rwandan mother. He now lives in France and has been a successful hip-hop artist. This is his first novel. This is an autobiographical novel of his life in Burundi. On … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sibilla Aleramo‘s Una donna (A Woman at Bay; later: A Woman). This is an early Italian feminist literary autobiographical novel, written nearly a hundred years before Elena Ferrante. The narrator tells of her upbringing in a house with a dominant and, at times, bullying father, whom she dearly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Zamir‘s Anguille sous Roche [Eel Under Rock], a Comorian novel published this summer, which has received a certain amount of acclaim in France, with added publicity when the author was initially refused a visa to enter France. The story is told in a stream-of-consciousness format by Anguille … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Austin Clarke‘s The Singing Men at Cashel. This is a novel that was published eighty years ago but was never reprinted (partially because it was banned in Ireland) and is now quite difficult to obtain. Clarke was part of the Celtic Twilight movement, which saw Irish writers looking … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Emile Habiby‘s فاء سعيد أبي النحس (The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist). The novel tells the story of Saeed,a Palestinian man, who works for the Israelis. He is almost killed during the Nakba in 1948, when Israelis fire at his family but, fortunately for him, a donkey … Read more