The latest addition to my website is Paulina Chiziane‘s O alegre canto da perdiz (The Joyful Cry of the Partridge). This is a part realist story but one told on a mythical level as Chiziane damns sexism, racism, colonialism, mixed race marriage and polygamy. We start with Maria das Dores, found wandering and naked in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 密やかな結晶 (The Memory Police). The novel is set on a remote island in an unnamed country. The narrator is an unnamed female novelist. The basic theme is that gradually things are disappearing. The Memory Police declare that a thing no longer exists – stamps, jewels, rose … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alison Langley‘s Budapest Noir Ilona Gets a Phone. Ilona is a sixty-one year old Hungarian woman. Communism has fallen and she is finally allowed a phone, previously denied as her husband had been killed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Her son, Emil, had defected to the USA … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Agustina Bessa-Luís‘s A Sibila [The Sibyl]. The novel tells the story of Quina, a Portuguese woman in a male-dominated society. Her father spends his money on women and gets involved in a bitter dispute over water rights which he loses, dying soon after. The cost to the family … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Margherita Giacobino‘s L’età ridicola (The Ridiculous Age). This novel tells the story of an unnamed elderly woman whio is aware that death is not far away. She lives in an upstairs flat in a city with her also very elderly cat. She has an immigrant carer, Gabriela,. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sahar Mustafah‘s The Beauty of Your Face. This novel is set primarily in the Chicago suburbs. However the heroine, Afaf Rahman, like the author, is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. We follow two alternating stories . The first is Afaf’s story. Her parents did not get on and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Isabella Hammad‘s The Parisian. Midhat Kamal lost his mother when he was two. When his father remarries, Midhat is sent off to a French school in Constantinople and then to study medicine in Montpellier. Things do not go well there, partially because he falls in love with his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Selma Dabbagh‘s Out of It. The book opens in Gaza with the Mujahed family and their friends and neighbours. Rashid is eager to go to a London where he has a scholarship to study and a girlfriend. His twin sister, Iman, is involved in a women’s group and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hala Alyan‘s Salt Houses. This novel tells the story of an extended Palestinian family, from when they are driven out of Nablus (in 1967), having been previously driven out of Jaffa. Some of them go to Kuwait, where they will also be driven out, by Saddam Hussein’s invasion … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Susan Albulhawa ‘s Scar of David (later:Mornings in Jenin). In this novel we follow an extended Palestinian family from the British mandate in the 1940s up to the early 2000s. Our main character is Amal, whom we first meet with an Israeli pressing a gun against her temple. … Read more