tmn The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sorokin‘s Теллурия (Telluria). This novel is set in a future where Russia and Europe have splintered into smaller states and seem to have been recently fighting a Christianity-Islam war which the Christians have won. The story is told in fifty vignettes, recounting the current siltation and the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Salvador Elizondo‘s El hipogeo secreto (The Secret Crypt). The novel is about a writer called Salvador Elizondo who is writing a book called The Secret Crypt. We start with a disparate group called Urkreis and we gradually learn that they are, possibly, the characters of this novel. Gradually, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergey Kuznetsov‘s Хоровод воды (The Round Dance of Water). This is a novel that tells the story of an extended family, from the Revolution to the present day, though with the main focus on the post-Soviet era. Kuznetsov himself stated that he wanted to write about my contemporaries … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eva Baltasar‘s Boulder (Boulder). Our narrator works as a mess-hall cook in various places in Chile, getting a job on a freighter early in the book. She is a complete loner, wanting only drink, tobacco and sex. In her travels she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, and they … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jordi Cussà‘s Cavalls salvatges (Wild Horses). The story shows that in many small towns in Catalonia in the 1980s, most young people were heroin junkies. The story is narrated to a great extent by Lex, clearly based on the author, and he and virtually all of the fairly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juan Pablo Villalobos‘ La invasión del pueblo del espíritu (Invasion of the Spirit People) . Set in an unnamed city but almost certainly Barcelona, this novel follows Gastón, an immigrant who runs a market garden. His friend Max, has a restaurant but he has lost his lease and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles‘s El síndrome de Lisboa (The Lisbon Syndrome). The novel is set in Caracas, Venezuela, where repression by the authorities is at its height. One day, Lisbon disappears and we eventually find out it might have been hit by an asteroid. Meanwhile, our hero Fernando, whose … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miklós Szentkuthy‘s Prae (Prae Part 2). This is the second part of Szentkuthy’s monumental novel, the first part having been reviewed previously. Like the first part it is long and very complicated, with key themes – love/lust, loneliness, religion, morals and coping with life, examined in a decidedly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Markiyan Kamysh‘s Оформляндія або прогулянка в Зону (Stalking the Atomic City). Markiyan Kamysh is a stalker, which means he enters Chernobyl illegally and wanders round exploring, regardless of the dangers of radiation, wild animals, snow drifts and the police. He has faced all four and survived. Why does … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hermann Bürger‘s Brenner Part 1 Brunsleben (Brenner), This is the semi-autobiographical story of Hermann Arbogast Brenner, a man who has failed at most things but is now writing a diary as he is dying of cancer. Bürger himself took his own life three days after the book was … Read more