tmn The latest addition to my website is Clara Dupont-Monod‘s Le roi disait que j’étais diable [The King Said I Was a Devil]. This novel is on the shortlist for this year’s Goncourt Prize (link in French), with the winner to be announced 5 November. This is a first person account by Eleanor of Aquitaine, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 瘋癲老人日記 (Diary of a Mad Old Man). This is, in fact, the diary of seventy-seven year old man who, while he might have one or two mental issues, is more of a dirty old man than a mad old man. The narrator is suffering from ill … Read more
After a longer wait than usual, they have announced the shortlist for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The fiction shortlist is: A World of Other People, Steven Carroll (HarperCollins) The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan (Vintage Australia) The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane (Penguin: Hamish Hamilton) Coal Creek, Alex Miller (Allen & … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gertrud Leutenegger‘s Panischer Frühling [Panic Spring]. This book was nominated for both the Swiss Book Prize (link in German) (winner announced 9 November) and the German Book Prize for which the winner has already been announced – Lutz Seiler’s Kruso, which I reviewed last week. It is something … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Mertens‘ Une paix royale [A Royal Peace]. This is a superb book about a Belgian called Pierre Raymond who is now a fairly reluctant travel guide, though this is something he has done for most of his life. However, he now needs a new focus and that … Read more
They have announced that Richard Flanagan‘s The Narrow Road to the Deep North has won this year’s Man Booker Prize. To my surprise, I have read the winner. It certainly was not a bad novel and well told and clearly helped exorcise both Flanagan’s demons and those of his father. However, I do not think … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lutz Seiler‘s Kruso, part of my feeble effort to read shortlisted books for this year’s book prizes, other than the Man Booker. This book was not only shortlisted for the German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) but won it. I had anticipated that it would win so had already … Read more
German author Siegfried Lenz has died. While not particularly well known in the English-speaking world, several of his works were translated into English, particularly Deutschstunde (The German Lesson), a superb novel about duty and art and the conflict between the two. It has been translated into English and is still readily available.
Lutz Seiler has won this year’s German Book Prize. He is known as a poet and this is his first novel, a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. I hope to have a review of it up later this week, though, of course, it has not been translated into English. I read last year’s winner and that has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Oskar Maria Graf‘s Anton Sittinger [Anton Sittinger]. This book, first published in 1937 (in London) tells the story of the rise to power of the Nazis, as seen through the eyes of Anton Sittinger, a postal inspector in Munich, who retires to the country in 1929. He is … Read more