tmn Just noted that the Portuguese writer Urbano Tavares Rodrigues died today. None of his books has been translated into English and, as far as I can see, all the sites reporting his death are in Portuguese. I have his Bastardos do Sol [Bastards of the Soil] and A Vaga de Calor [Heatwave] but have yet … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Georges Ngal‘s Giambatista Viko ou Le Viol du discours africain [Giambatista Viko or the Rape of African Discourse]. Ngal’s first novel is about the struggle of writing that first novel. Giambatista Viko teaches at an institute of higher learning in what was then Zaïre. He and his colleagues … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ross Raisin‘s God’s Own Country (US: Out Backward). It is a story told by Sam Marsdyke, a solitary eighteen-year old who lives on a farm on the North Yorkshire Moors, with his parents, a grumpy father and an unhappy mother. Sam is a (probably) unreliable narrator. He was … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Kavenna‘s . This is a novel about childbirth. There are four separate but linked stories about childbirth. The first is set in 1865 and is about Ignaz Semmelweis who discovered the link between infection and the death of women in childbirth. He went mad and, in this … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ibrahim Al-Koni‘s أنوبيس (Anubis). This is the first Libyan novel on my website but it is not your typical Libyan novel, as al-Koni is a Tuareg and this is very much a Tuareg novel. It tells the story of Anubi, a legendary Tuareg character, who catches a glimpse … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s The Manikin. This is another superb novel from Joanna Scott. It is primarily set in a remote house in upstate New York called the Manikin (the name for the framework used to build anatomical models). The late owner, Henry Craxton, made his fortune out of selling … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Shamsur Rahman Faruqi‘s اند تھے سر آسما (The Mirror of Beauty). This has been hailed as one of the great Urdu novels. It was published in Urdu in 2006 and has now been translated into English by the author, a mammoth task as the book is over 950 … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nadifa Mohamed‘s Black Mamba Boy. Mohamed is one of the Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, though she is Somali and this novel is very much a Somali novel. It tells the story of her grandfather, Jama Mohamed, and his difficult but adventurous life growing up in the 1930s … Read more
They have announced the Man Booker long list for 2013. Every year, I vow that I shall keep away from it and every year I succumb. I have only read one of the books but will probably read more. I would guess that the two Irish men – Colum McCann and Colm Tóibín must be … Read more
The latest addition to my website is