The latest addition to my website is Agustina Bazterricas Cadáver exquisito (Tender Is the Flesh). This is a novel about cannibalism, not occasional cannibalism but official, world-wide cannibalism. A virus has led to all animals being wiped out (though it may have been fake news) and eating human flesh is the norm. Certain groups (the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergio Bizzio‘s Borgestein. Enzo, the narrator, is an Argentinian psychiatrist. He is attacked and wounded with a knife by one of his patients, Borgestein. This traumatises him so much that he buys a cabin in the mountains and heads off there, to do nothing. He leaves behind his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Menasse‘s Die Hauptstadt (Capital). This is a satire on the European Union, its officials and some of the nationalities who are part of it. The story starts in Place Sainte-Cathérine, in the centre of Brussels, where most of the main characters are to be found at the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Artforum (Artforum). This is a series of short pieces all linked by the US art magazine Artforum. The narrator is a devoted reader of the magazine but it is difficult to obtain in Buenos Aires, where he lives so, eventually, he subscribes to it. However, delivery … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Roger Manderscheid‘s Feier a Flam [Fire and Flame]. Manderscheid was a Luxembourg writer and he wrote this book in Luxembourgish and then translated it himself into German. It is a Bildungsroman, the third part of a trilogy, with the first two books telling of the childhood of Christian … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Russell Celyn Jones‘ An Interference of Light. This novel tells two stories: one set in 1937-39 and one in 1959, both taking place in Sharon, a Welsh slate-quarrying community. It is narrated by Aaron Lewis, whose parents were from the Sharon area but who emigrated to the United … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fernanda Melchor‘s emporada de huracanes (Hurricane Season). The novel tells the story of a small Mexican town, La Matosa. At the beginning, the body of a woman known locally as The Witch, is found dead in a stream. The novel tells her story and that of her mother, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hilary Mantel‘s The Mirror and the Light, the brilliant conclusion to her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the adviser to Henry VIII. The novel starts and ends with two beheadings. It opens with the beheading of Anne Boleyn and ends with Cromwell’s own beheading, some four years later. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kim Sagwa‘s 나b책 (b, Book and Me). The novel tells the story of three Korean misfits, b, Book and Rang (the me of the title). Rang is badly bullied at school by the baseball boys. b’s family is very poor and she and Rang become friends till they … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s Riña de gatos (An Englishman in Madrid). Though unusually for Mendoza set in Madrid instead of Barcelona and environs, this book is his usual mockery of all and sundry, particularly the eponymous Englishman. He is Anthony Whitelands, a thirty something English art expert, specialising in Spanish … Read more