The latest addition to my website is Alexis Wright‘s Plains of Promise. It is about the (poor) treatment of aborigines, both now and in the 1950s. The first part is set in a mission in the north of the country, where the mother of seven year old Ivy Koopundi has just killed herself by dowsing … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sadriddin Aini‘s Марги судхур (Death of a Money Lender), the first Tajik novel on my website. It is an amusing novel but with a certain seriousness, telling the story of Kori-Ichkamba, a large man, who spends his time cajoling, cheating and avoiding paying for anything at all. He … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Colm Tóibín‘s The Testament of Mary. I have generally not enjoyed Tóibín’s work and this was no exception. Indeed, I only read it because it was on the Man Booker shortlist. It is the testament of the Virgin Mary, writing long after her son’s death, speaking not as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is NoViolet Bulawayo‘s We Need New Names. Narrated by a ten-year old girl, Darling, in Zimbabwe, this novel recounts, on the one hand, the grim situation in Zimbabwe as as seen by Darling, and how people, particularly the children survived, and, on the other hand, the cultural differences that … Read more
The latest additions to my website are the two novels by Jhumpa Lahiri. The first is The Namesake, a novel which has deservedly received much acclaim and has been made into a successful film. It deals with the issue of names, identity and cultural differences. Gogol Ganguli is so named because, thanks to a book … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s The Black Book. This was Durrell’s first novel, written when he was twenty-two and published in France when he was twenty-four (it was considered too obscene to be published unexpurgated in England). It has some of the hallmarks of a first novel by a twenty-two year … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Arnon Grunberg‘s Figuranten (Silent Extras). Grunberg tells the story of three young people – two Dutch men and and an Argentinian woman – who want to make it in the world but struggle to do so. They have ambitions to become film or theatre stars but only get … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Georges Ngal‘s L’Errance [Wandering]. This is a follow-up to his Giambatista Viko ou Le Viol du discours africain [Giambatista Viko or the Rape of African Discourse]. Like its predecessor, it is both a mockery of current views of African culture, particularly by Africans, as well as proposals for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Thomas Pynchon‘s Bleeding Edge. This novel continues with Pynchon’s obsession with conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies. It is set at the turn of the millennium, so includes conspiracies about 9/11 and, as you can imagine, it is not Al-Qaida who gets the blame. It tells the story of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mario Vargas Llosa‘s El héroe discreto [The Discreet Hero]. This is his latest novel, which has yet to be translated into English, though will undoubtedly appear in English before long. Amazingly, it is already out in German. It is not one of his great works but one of … Read more