The latest addition to my website is Sebastiano Vassalli‘s La notte della cometa (The Night of the Comet), surprisingly translated into English and, though out of print, readily available. This is a novelised biography of the Italian poet Dino Campana, a poète maudit. Vassalli has chosen to use the novel form rather than write a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marlene van Niekerk‘s Triomf (Triomf). This is a very funny novel about a poor white South African family, that is totally dysfunctional. They live in the suburb of Triomf, specially built for poor whites on top of a bulldozed black shantytown, Sophiatown. The Benade family consists of Mol, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eimear McBride‘s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. McBride has been hailed as a genius for this novel and it has received quite a few positive reviews, though some less positive. I am afraid that I am in the latter camp. It is written in a stream of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hannah Kent‘s Burial Rites. Though Kent is Australian, this novel is set entirely in Iceland, where Kent spent some time. It tells the story, based on an actual historical incident, of the murder of two men at a remote farm. Three people have been arrested and found guilty … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Audrey Magee‘s The Undertaking, one of the books on the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This is Magee’s first novel and a fine novel it is. The hero is Peter Faber, a German soldier in World War II, who is fighting on the Russian front. He … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Americanah, her third novel. As should happen, her second novel was much better than her first and this one is much better than her second one and, given that the second one was a very fine novel that definitely means that this one is a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gerard Reve‘s Bezorgde Ouders (Parents Worry). This novel tells the story of Hugo Treger, an alcoholic, homosexual, Catholic poet and translator. We follow one day in his life (a short time before Christmas) and, though the story is told in the third person, the story consists entirely of … Read more
The latest addition to my wesbite is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Purple Hibiscus, her first novel. I was a bit disappointed with this book, as it was a bit unsubtle, telling the story of a teenage Nigerian girl, Kambili, and how she had suffered at the hands of her very rich but very religious father, Eugene. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun, a stunning novel about the period just before and during the Biafran War. Adichie is an Igbo, the tribe on the losing side in the Biafran War so she naturally tells the tale from the side of her people who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 蓼喰う蟲 (Some Prefer Nettles). This is wonderful little novel on the gradual falling apart of a marriage but one that it is falling apart without bitterness and recriminations but just because the couple are, as Kaname, the husband, says, no longer excited by one another. Misako, … Read more