We have already had the Prix Femina – Haitian novelist Yanick Lahens won with Bain de lune, and the Prix Médicis – Antoine Volodine won with Terminus radieux and today we got the Prix Renaudot with David Foenkinos winning with Charlotte and the Prix Goncourt with Lydie Salvayre winning with Pas Pleurer. None of these … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irène Némirovsky‘s David Golder (David Golder). It tells the story of a ruthless businessman in 1920s France, who specialises in oil. We see him outwitting, often by devious means, his competitors but also his colleagues. He has a large house in Biarritz, where his wife, Gloria, and daughter, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carmen Amoraga‘s La vida era eso [Such Was Life]. This is another book in my reading of this year’s literary prize winners/shortlisted books. This book won Spain’s Nadal Prize. It tells the story of Giuliana di Benedetto, an Argentinian of Italian origin who lives in Spain. At the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lucia Etxebarría‘s Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes [Beatrice and the Heavenly Bodies]. This is the story of a young Spanish woman, Beatriz de la Haya, and her life at around the age of twenty. For a while she lives with Mónica, in the house of Mónica’s parents, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kamel Daoud‘s Meursault, contre-enquête [Meursault, Counter Investigation], part of my effort at reading literary prize winners/shortlisted writers other than the Man Booker. This book has already won the prix François Mauriac, not to be confused with the prix François Mauriac and the Prix des cinq continents de la … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marilynne Robinson‘s Housekeeping. This is, of course, a book I should have read years ago but, with her new book just out, now was the time to do it. Apart from the fact, that this is one of the foremost US novels of the latter part of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Geoff Nicholson‘s The City Under the Skin. I notice that this is the sixteenth novel by Nicholson I have read and I can safely say that I have enjoyed them all. This follows the usual Nicholson pattern – a mysterious plot with twists and twists within twists, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Idris Ali‘s دنقلة : رواية نوبية (Dongola). This a novel by a Nubian. Nubia was a separate kingdom, in the south of Egypt, and north of Sudan. Indeed, as the book tells us, it was a Christian kingdom, till conquered by Egypt in the late Middle Ages. For … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Heather O’Neill‘s The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. This is another book in my reading of literary prize shortlist books that aren’t the Man Booker, this book being on the Giller Prize shortlist , with the winner to be announced 10 November. This novel tells the colourful story … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wilson Harris‘ Black Marsden. This is another enigmatic novel from Harris which I cannot claim to have fully understood or to have enjoyed. It concerns a man called Clive Goodrich, who is rich, having won the football pools, and who has bought a house in Edinburgh with the … Read more