The latest addition to my website is Hector Camín‘s El error de la luna [The Moon’s Mistake]. This tells the story of the nineteen year old Leonor Gonzalbo, whose parents have been killed in a car crash and who is now living with her grandparents. Leonor becomes obsessed with her late aunt, Mariana, whom she … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Valeria Luiselli‘s La historia de mis dientes (The Story of My Teeth). This is a superb post-modern novel about, well, teeth (amongst other things). Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez was born with four premature teeth. When his adult teeth grew, they were all pointing in different directions. After an uneventful … Read more
The latest addition to my website is José Agustín‘s De perfil [In Profile]. This novel, Agustín’s second, had considerable commercial and critical success in Mexico. It tells of four days in the life of the narrator, known only as X, a seventeen year old boy. We follow his relationship with his parents, particularly his father, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alek Popov‘s Мисия Лондон (Mission to London). Alek Popov was the cultural attaché to the Bulgarian Embassy in London and this is a very funny novel, satirising the Embassy and its relations with the British. The main focus of the story is a charity event, hosted by the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono:‘s Un de Baumugnes (Lovers are Never Losers). This is the second in Giono’s Pan trilogy of novels. This one is a love story. Amédeé, an older itinerant farm worker meets Albin, a young man from the eponymous Baumugnes, a strange (and fictitious) community of non-Catholics driven … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alfredo Bryce Echenique‘s Las obras infames de Pancho Marambio [The Infamous Works of Pancho Marambio]. Bienvenido Salvador Buenaventura is a fifty-four year old successful lawyer in Lima. He has never been married. His parents and two brother are both dead, the men from alcoholism. The two others were … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jaroslav Kalfar‘s Spacemen of Bohemia. Kalfar was born in Prague but moved to the US when he was fifteen and wrote this novel in English. It is about Jakub Procházka, the first Czech astronaut (in 2018), who is sent into space to investigate a mysterious purple cloud between … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Coover‘s Huck Out West. This is another wonderfully post-modern, iconoclastic, very funny book from Robert Coover. It tells the story of Huckleberry Finn and, to a certain degree, of Tom Sawyer, when they become adults and head out to the Wild West. Finn remains the loveable but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Aminata Sow Fall‘s La Grève des bàttu (The Beggars’ Strike). This is a mocking satire on officialdom in Senegal (though neither the country nor the city where it takes place are named). The city, presumably, Dakar, is overrun with beggars and the public health department is given the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Michel Miniussi‘s Lei Passatemps [The Pastimes]. Though born in Paris, Miniussi grew up in Cannes and became a very great supporter of Occitan literature. Sadly, he died at the age of thirty-six. This book, like some of his others, was published posthumously. It is an unusual book for … Read more