The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Psychopompe [ Psychopomp]. Yes, psychopomp is a word ( literally the guide of souls. They are creatures, spirits, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. This is a (semi-)autobiographical novel and tells of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Caroline Lamarche‘s La Chienne de Naha [The Bitch of Naha] . The book opens with a tale from the Triqui people (in Mexico) about a bitch (i.e. a female dog) who changes into a woman and is exploited by a man. The book tells of an unnamed narrator … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb: Le livre des soeurs [The Book of the Sisters]. The book tells of Tristane, born to parents who are more interested in one another than they are in their daughter so she is often left to her own devices. She teaches herself to speak, to read … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Premier sang [First Blood]. The book starts with a man facing a firing squad and moves to his childhood in an unconventional Belgian aristocratic family. We gradually realise that it is, in fact, the story of Nothomb’s father, Patrick, a diplomat who served in the former … Read more
I read and reviewed Lize Spit/‘s The Melting four years ago (in German). It has since been translated into various languages but will be appearing in English – finally! – this week. I can highly recommend it.
The latest addition to my website is Henri Calet‘s La Fièvre des Polders [Polder Fever]. Calet’s third novel is set in Burrh, a small Belgian town near the Dutch border, where there are polders, i.e. land reclaimed from the sea and rivers. Ward Waterwind sells beer but drinks too many of the profits and spends … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Les aérostats [Airships]. Ange, a nineteen-year old university student in Brussels gets a job teaching a sixteen-year old boy who is allegedly dyslexic (he isn’t) and who needs helps with his French studies. The pay is generous but the father is controlling. However, while the boy … Read more
The latest edition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Soif [Thirst]. Nothomb had long been planning to write her Jesus novel but had not felt able to do so till 2019. It tells his story, from his point of view, from the trial to the resurrection. This is not your conventional religious novel, as this … Read more
Latest on my website: Amélie Nothomb‘s Les prénoms épicènes [The Epicene First Names]. This is a Nothomb parable, telling the tale of a couple with epicene first names, (names which can be used for either sex) and their daughter called Epicène. He (Claude) had seduced her (Dominique) and persuaded her to marry him and move … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Frappe-toi le coeur [Strike Your Heart], her latest annual novel. This is something of a change from her normal style, as it is a damning indictment of two mothers, for both neglecting and spoiling their children, with dire consequences. The heroine is Diane, whose mother Marie … Read more