The latest addition to my website is James Salter‘s A Sport and a Pastime. The novel is set in France, specifically Paris and Autun, and is narrated by a self-confessed unreliable narrator. He has borrowed the house of Parisian friends in Autun, where he is staying on his own, lusting unsuccessfully after the divorcee Mme … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jowhor Ile‘s And After Many Days. This is Ile’s first novel and very well written for a first novel. The story involves the Utu family, who live in Port Harcourt, and consists of Benedict (Bendic), a lawyer, his wife, Ma, a teacher and their two sons, Paul and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Abdulaziz Al-Farsi‘s تبكي الأرض– يضحك زحل (Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs), the first Omani novel on my website. It is a gently mocking satire of a village in Oman where the majority of people seem to be conspiring against others, have guilty secrets which are only gradually revealed (to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Survive the Peace. This novel is set at the end of the Biafran War. James Odugo is a radio journalist who has been travelling around Biafra, broadcasting news of the war, with the radio station continually having to move as the Federals get closer. James’ wife … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alexander Chayanov‘s Путешествие моего брата Алексея в страну крестьянской утопии (The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia). This is a 1920 novel set in 1984 (yes, thirty-nine years before George Orwell got there), written by a well-respected Soviet agricultural economist, whose political views … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Жизнь насекомых (The Life of Insects). This is a thoroughly original book which takes as its premise the idea that insects can also have human form and behave and act like humans. We have mosquitoes who travel the world, looking for the ideal blood to suck, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Edmundo Paz Soldán‘s Los vivos y los muertos [The Living and the Dead]. It is based on events in the 1990s in the town of Dryden, New York, when nine people died in the space of three months, seven of whom were murdered. Paz Soldán lived in nearby … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergei Lebedev‘s Предела забвения (Oblivion). The Russian title means something like The Limits of Oblivion, though much of the novel is about recovering lost memories, specifically lost memories of the Soviet era of prison camps. The unnamed narrator is rescued twice by a man he calls Grandfather II. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marianne Fritz‘s Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse (The Weight of Things), the first novel by the Austrian writer Marianne Fritz to be translated into English, thirty-seven years after it was first published. The novel tells the story of Berta Schrei nee Faust. During World War II, she loses her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Paola Capriolo‘s Il nocchiero (The Helmsman). This tells the story of a helmsman, Walter. The job consists of driving a barge from a port, nominally containing animals, though he has never seen the cargo and does not know what is really in the hold. He takes it to … Read more