The latest addition to my website is Anna Lidia Vega Serova‘s Ánima fatua (Anima fatua). This is an autobiographical novel about a woman born in Leningrad to a Cuban father and Russian mother. They emigrate to Cuba but the parents divorce and mother, daughter and son return to Russia where things do not go well. … Read more
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 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 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 Susan Daitch‘s The Adjudicator. The novel is set sometime in the future with babies made to order in a genetics facility, thereby eliminating most diseases, mental and physical. However sometimes things go wrong and the adjudicators have to deal with these problems. Our heroine, Zedi Loew, is ... Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ghazaleh Alizadeh‘s خانه ادریسیها (The House of The Edrisis (Volume 2), following on from first volume. It continues the story of the three remaining members of the Edrisi, whose house has been taken over by revolutionaries. However the Edrisis and the revolutionaries have reached a way of living … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maro Douka‘s Η αρχαία σκουριά (Fool’s Gold). The heroine/narrator of this novel, set in Athens between 1967 and 1974, is Myrsini, the only child of bourgeois parents. She considers herself to be centrist. However early on the Greek colonels take over. She gets involved in the opposition but … Read more