The latest addition to my website is Martin Wickramasinghe‘s ගම්පෙරළිය (The Uprooted) Part 1: (The Village). This is the first novel in a trilogy which, though translated into English, is very difficult to obtain in the UK/US. It tells the story of how, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the feudal classes fell into … Read more
The latest addition to my website is June Allison Gibbons‘ The Pepsi-Cola Addict. The novel was published by a vanity press and is now virtually impossible to obtain. June Allison Gibbons and her identical twin, Jennifer, were born on an RAF base in Aden. Their parents were from Barbados. They grew up in the UK, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Claudio Magris‘ Danubio (Danube). This is not really a novel, though Magris himself calls it a drowned novel, and the introduction to my Italian edition calls it part novel/part non-fiction. It describes a journey from the source of the Danube (which is disputed) to its outlet in the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jane Bowles‘ Two Serious Ladies. The story mirrors, to a certain degree, Bowles’ own life and the life of her husband, Paul Bowles. It is also her only completed novel, published when she was twenty-five. It is a decidedly strange novel and got very mixed reviews when first … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 白昼鬼語 (Devils in Daylight), the second of two Tanizaki novels to appear from New Directions later this month (April 2017). This is a fairly short and early novel. It has one of Tanizaki’s favourite themes – the femme fatale. The Tanizaki alter ego, Takasashi, the narrator, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Shinobu Orikuchi‘s 死者の書 (The Book of the Dead), a wonderful Japanese ghost story, set in the eight century. The story starts with a dead man in his tomb, who is just waking up. All he can remember is the sight of the beautiful Mimimo no Toni, whom he … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 台所太平記 (The Maids). This was the last novel he wrote and is something of a counterpoint to 細雪 (The Makioka Sisters). The latter tells the story of the owners, while this novel tells the stories of the maids. Though the maids are not the maids of … Read more
I have now read twenty Mexican novels in a row. So what have I learned? Well, Mexican literature is as varied as any other well developed literature. I found post-modern novels, feminist novels, historical novels, psychological novels, love and romance and death and dying. However, a few things stand out, even if the twenty novels … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yuri Herrera‘s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (Signs Preceding the End of the World). This is a superb short novel which can be read as Dantesque journey through the underworld or as the story of a woman illegally entering the United States from Mexico, not to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Elena Poniatowska‘s Leonora (Leonora). This is a feminist biographical novel about Leonora Carrington. Carrington was a Surrealist painter, something quite rare for an English woman. She was the daughter of a textile magnate and, though brought up in wealth, she was very free-spirited, which did not go down … Read more