tmn The latest addition to my website is Sara Lidman‘s Tjärdalen [The Tar Still]. This is Lidman’s first novel, telling the story of a remote Swedish village. Nils has spent a long time building a tar still, from which he hopes to make some money. However, just before he is to light it, he finds it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is A. G. Porta‘s Me llamo Vila-Matas, como todo el mundo [My Name is Vila-Matas, Like Everyone. This is a short absurdist book, consisting of a dialogue between two unnamed people, who are called Vila-Matas, like everyone. The basic premise is that the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas has come … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ Esta bruma insensata [That Mindless Mist]. This is Vila-Matas on form with his intellectual, literary, post-modern games. We follow the story of Simon Schneider, a man from Barcelona, who makes his living providing quotations to a successful US-based author, who turns out to be his younger … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s Una comedia ligera (A Light Comedy) . It set in the late 1940s, in and around Barcelona, as with most of Mendoza’s work. Our hero is Carlos Prullàs, a popular and successful playwright, who writes light comedies. We follow him around for a long while – … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ibtisam Azem‘s وسفر الاختفاء (The Book of Disappearance). The book is set primarily in Jaffa. Alaa is a Palestinian who works as a cameraman. At the beginning of the book his beloved grandmother dies and much of the book is tribute to her and the sufferings she and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s Quartier perdu (A Trace of Malice). This has several of Modiano’s favourite themes – looking for the past, finding Paris has changed a lot, a hero who has two personalities – his present and his past one and some murky secret which will gradually come out. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Olga Tokarczuk‘s Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead). This is a superb novel from the Nobel Prize Winner. It tells the story of Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman who lives on her own in a remote Polish village near … Read more
The latest addition to my website is André Salifou‘s Tels pères tels fils [Like Father, Like Son]. Salifou was a long-serving Niger politician but he also wrote many books, including novels. He calls this book a Sahelian saga and it is set in three time periods – the pre-colonial era, the colonial era and the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s El mago [The Magician]. The short way to describe this novel would to say it is about a depressed magician. Our hero Hans Chans, is an Argentinian magician. Unlike other magicians, he does not perform tricks, he really can do magic. However, he has been reluctant … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alberto Fuguet‘s Tinta roja [Red Ink]. Our hero is Alfonso Fernández Ferrer, who is fifty-one when writing this book but looks back at an experience in his early twenties. He had been studying journalism at university and he is sent for a four month internship at a Santiago … Read more