The latest addition to my website is Yambo Ouologuem‘s Le Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence). This novel was hailed on publication as, unlike previous African novels, it did not show pre-colonial Africa as a wonderful place but, rather, as subject to violence, brutality, slavery, cruelty, incest, pedophilia, ill-treatment of women and many other ills. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic‘s Gotická duše (Gothic Soul). This is Czech Decadence at its best, a response to or, more likely, a homage to J K Huysmans’ classic decadent novel, À rebours (Against the Grain). The unnamed narrator, last scion of a distinguished family, with only a few … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sophie Cooke‘s Under The Mountain, her second and most recent novel. This is another fine novel by the very much underrated Cooke. This is a novel somwhat reminsicent of The Go-Between, in that it involves a child, sick in bed, during the summer holiday, who witnesses a key … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Lumières de Pointe-Noire (The Lights of Pointe-Noire). This is a fictionalised autobiography following from his earlier Demain j’aurai vingt ans (Tomorrow I’ll be Twenty). It tells primarily of his return to the Congo twenty-six years after he left, his mourning for his mother, Pauline and, to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yuri Andrukhovych‘s Рекреації (Recreations). This is a thoroughly enjoyable anarchic take on the first day of Festival of the Resurrecting Spirit in Chortopil (it means devil’s town). We follow four poets, who seem to be more interested in alcohol and sex than poetry. Two come by train – … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Georgi Gospodinov‘s Физика на тъгата (The Physics of Sorrow). This is a postmodern novel narrated by the author or, at least, a man called Georgi Gospodinov, about his life and the life of his father and grandfather. The narrator initially identifies not only with himself but with his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nuruddin Farah‘s Sweet and Sour Milk, another grim tale from Somalia. Soyaan is feeling decidedly unwell and, by the end of the chapter, is dead. Has he been poisoned and, if so, by whom? The family, not wishing to make a fuss and also because Muslims bury their … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ Bartleby y compañía (Bartleby & Co.). This is perhaps more literary criticism than a novel. It is narrated by a man called Marcelo who wrote a novel twenty-five years ago and has not written anything since. His new work is to be about writers he calls … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Les Petits-fils nègres de Vercingétorix [The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix]. I found this novel somewhat disappointing, as it is a bit disjointed and seems to be telling one story but never manages to get on with it. It is about the civil war and its effect … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sophie Cooke‘s The Glass House. She did not make the Granta Best Young British Novelists list but I think that she should have done, as this novel is definitely better than some of the ones I read by those who did make the list. This novel tells the … Read more