The latest addition to my website is Hiromi Kawakami‘s 三度目The (Third Love). As is usual with Kawakami, this book is about love and its many complications. Riko falls in love with the older Naa-Chan when she is two and, much later, they will marry. However, Naa-Chan has a series of relationships which naturally upsets her. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Svetoslav Minkov and Konstantin Konstantinov‘s Сърцето в картонената кутия [The Heart in the Cardboard Box]. This is a short Bulgarian absurdist novel written by trwo writers and tells of a poet who has lost his actual, physical heart. Much of the novel gives the writers an excuse to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is László Krasznahorkai‘s Háború és háború (War and War). György Korin who works in a public records office in a small Hungarian town finds a strange manuscript and feels that it must be published in the centre of the world – New York, He sells everything and we follow … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s ホテル・アイリス (Hotel Iris). Mari, a seventeen year old Japanese woman works in her mother’s hotel and has no life of her own. There is an argument between a prostitute and her client in one of the rooms. Later Mari sees the man, a translator from Russian, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karen Duve‘s Dies ist kein Liebeslied (This is Not a Love Song). The title comes from a song by John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten’s post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd. It is narrated by a German woman, Anne Strelau, who is depressive, frequently overweight and does not fit … Read more
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 Tatsuhiko Shibusawa‘s 高丘親王航海記 (Takaoka’s Travels). This is a highly imaginative and colourful account of the travels of the very real Prince Takaoka around South-East Asia as he tries to get to Hindustan and the birthplace of the Buddha. The book is set in the ninth century. Quite a … 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 Gabriel García Márquez‘s En Agosto Nos Vemos (Until August). This is his last book – a novella – published well after his death and one he asked not be published. It tells of a forty-six year old woman who is happily married to an orchestra conductor. Her mother … Read more