The latest addition to my website is Tatsuhiko Shibusawa‘s 高丘親王航海記 (Takaoka’s Travels). This is a highly imaginative and colourful account of the travels of the very real Prince Takaoka around South-East Asia as he tries to get to Hindustan and the birthplace of the Buddha. The book is set in the ninth century. Quite a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 密やかな結晶 (The Memory Police). The novel is set on a remote island in an unnamed country. The narrator is an unnamed female novelist. The basic theme is that gradually things are disappearing. The Memory Police declare that a thing no longer exists – stamps, jewels, rose … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alison Langley‘s Budapest Noir Ilona Gets a Phone. Ilona is a sixty-one year old Hungarian woman. Communism has fallen and she is finally allowed a phone, previously denied as her husband had been killed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Her son, Emil, had defected to the USA … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gabriel García Márquez‘s En Agosto Nos Vemos (Until August). This is his last book – a novella – published well after his death and one he asked not be published. It tells of a forty-six year old woman who is happily married to an orchestra conductor. Her mother … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 密会 (Secret Rendezvous). Even by Abe’s standards this is a seriously weird book. A jump shoe salesman and his wife are woken up at 4 am. by an ambulance which has come to take the wife to hospital. They did not summon the ambulance and she … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gün G. Ayurzana‘s Бөөгийн домог [Legend of the Shaman]. This Mongolian novel is, as the title tells us, is about shamanism. Tengiz has had an unhappy love affair. He goes to Lake Baikal where he meets Khagdai. a practising shaman. Khagdai has had a hard life, sent to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Agustina Bessa-Luís‘s A Sibila [The Sibyl]. The novel tells the story of Quina, a Portuguese woman in a male-dominated society. Her father spends his money on women and gets involved in a bitter dispute over water rights which he loses, dying soon after. The cost to the family … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Margherita Giacobino‘s L’età ridicola (The Ridiculous Age). This novel tells the story of an unnamed elderly woman whio is aware that death is not far away. She lives in an upstairs flat in a city with her also very elderly cat. She has an immigrant carer, Gabriela,. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Diego Marani‘s La città celeste (The Celestial City). This is a humorous, colourful, (semi-)autobiographical account of a young Italian man going to Trieste to study translation and interpreting and his time there. His main motive is to escape his strict, domineering father. However, in his various activities – … Read more
I have now read twenty Palestinian novels in a row. Initially I thought I might struggle to find twenty, given that I had already read a few but it was not a problem. Whether it was wise to read twenty Palestinian novels in a row is another matter. All of them, without exception, showed to … Read more