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 Felix Nesi‘s Orang orang Oetimu (People from Oetimu). Oetimu is a village in West Timor, part of Indonesia. The background is the volatile history – Dutch/Portuguese, Japanese occupation and Indonesia vs East Timor whihch has seemingly settled down but, in practice has not. We follow a host of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Stratis Doukas‘ Ιστορία είνος εἰμφαλώτου (A Prisoner of War’s Story). This is a very short book amd based on the account of an actual Greek man who managed to escape to Greece when the Turks took Smyrna in 1922. Our narrator is separated from his parents in Smyrna … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rhea Galanaki‘s Ο βίος του Ισμαήλ Φερίκ Πασά (The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha. Ismail was a historical character. He and his brother were born in Crete but captured by the Ottomans during a Cretan revolt and sent into slavery. The brother escapedwhile Ismail was spotted,trained at a … Read more
The latest addition to my website consists of two novels published in one volume. The first is Daur Nachkebia‘s Берег ночи (The Shore of Night). It is set during the Abkazia-Georgia conflict as well as before and after that conflict. The narrator is Beslan who fought in the conflict and he haas been given the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill‘s Los pichiciegos (Malvinas Requiem)The novel focuses on a group of Argentinian deserters during the Falklands War in 1982. They have managed to hide away underground but are worried about both their own side and the British. They are ruled with a rod of iron by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vera Mutafchieva‘s Случаят Джем (The Case of Cem). After the sudden death of Mehmed II, known as Mehmed the Conqueror, his two sons vie for the throne. The elder son, Bayezid wins and his younger half-brother Cem Sultan is driven into exile. The story, narrated by a series … Read more
The latest addition to my website is German Sadulaev‘s Я — чеченец! (I am a Chechen!). As the title tells us, this book is written by a Chechen. A lot of the book focusses on the Chechen wars with Russia, though our hero did not participate too much in them, not least because he was … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mia Couto‘s Mulheres de Cinzas (Woman of the Ashes). This is the first book in a trilogy about Portugal’s colonisation of the part of Africa that came to be Mozambique, at the end of the nineteenth century. We follow a village, Nkokolani, inhabited by the Chopi people. They … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miquel de Palol‘s El jardí dels set crepuscles (The Garden of Seven Twilights). This is the first novel by the major Catalan writer to appear in English and it was well worth the wait. It is set in the near future, when nuclear war is taking place globally. … Read more