The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘ s 猫を抱いて象と泳 [Swim with an Elephant Holding a Cat]. Our hero is brought up by his grandparents but remains a loner. One day he meets a former bus driver, now massively overweight, who teaches him chess, both how to play and the philosophy behind it. However … Read more
The latest addition to my website is
The latest addition to my website is Maylis de Kerangal‘s Naissance d’un pont (Birth of a Bridge). As the title tells us it is about the building of a bridge, in this case in the fictitious US town of Coca. The project is led by the seasoned Georges Diderot and we follow his story as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Akram Aylisli‘s Farewell, Aylis. Akram Aylisli is an Azerbaijani writer who has been viciously criticised for showing sympathy to the Armenians, particularly for the second book in this trilogy of novellas, Stone Dreams which tells the story of a famous Azerbaijani actor who is badly beaten for trying … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Gliff. This is on Ali Smith’s favourite theme – broken Britain. It is set sometime in the future where UVs (Unverifiables), i.e. undesirables are driven out of their home – a red band is painted round a condemned home – and often sent to labour camps. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Colette‘s L’Ingénue libertine (The Innocent Libertine). This was originally published as two separate books but then combined into one in translation. It tells the story of Minne who, in the first book, is a fourteen tyear old schoolgirl in Paris, daughter of a widow. There has been gang … Read more
The latest addition to my website isAlexei Ivanov‘s Пищеблок The Food Block). The novel is set in 1980 in a remote Soviet pioneer camp on the Volga. Our two heroes are Igor Korzukhin, a team leader, and Valerka, a young pioneer. The pioneers indulge in various activities but first Valerka Lagunov and then Igor discover … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sylvain Trudel‘s Le Souffle de l’harmattan (The Harmattan Winds). Set in Quebec, our hero Hugues is a foundling, unsure of his origins, except he seems to have almond eyes. He is influenced by the poems of a deceased and fictitious poet called Desuet and a fellow orphan, Habeke … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Magdalena Blažević‘s U kasno ljeto (In Late Summer). The novel, narrated by a girl called Ivana, is set in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Ivana. Neither Bosnia nor the war are specifically mentioned. Ivana and her family live in an agricultural village, where life goes on smoothly, people … Read more
The latest addition to my website is José Eduardo Agualusa‘s Os Vivos e os Outros (The Living and The Rest) The book involves an African literary conference taking place on lha de Moçambique) , a resort island off the coast of Mozambique. The writers are all African, primarily fictitious. They discuss issues such what it … Read more