The latest addition to my website is Guzel Yakhina‘s Дети мои (A Volga Tale). The focus is on the Volga Germans, German nationals who, at the invitation of Catherine the Great (herself German) emigrated to Russia in the late eighteenth century and settled alongside the River Volga. Catherine the Great referred to them as my … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Kur sunduesit grinden (A Dictator Calls). Kadare had spent some time studying in Moscow where he heard the story about the call Stalin made to Boris Pasternak in 1934 about fellow poet Osip Mandelstam. Mandelstam had been arrested (for writing poems critical of Stalin)and Stalin asked … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ventura Ametller‘s Summa kaòtica (Summa Kaotica). This is one of the great Catalan novels, which has finally made it into English. It is set in Poel, based on Amettler’s hometown of Pals. It starts both with the birth of the Second Spanish Republic, founded in 1931, as well … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Andrew Crumey‘s Beethoven’s Assassins. This is a brilliant novel which is nominally about Beethoven (the composer) but is also about lots of other things. Crumey tells a host of stories, often featuring historical characters, some from Beethoven’s era and some from the UK, some modern, some not. We … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Antonio Soler‘s El nombre que ahora digo (Soldiers in the Fog). The novel is set in the Spanish Civil War and follows the story of Gustavo Sintora. He had fled, like many others, from his hometown of Malaga, as Franco approached and after a few adventures ends up … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Grazia Deledda‘s Marianna Sirca. The book is set in Deledda’s native Sardinia. The eponymous heroine has worked all her life, obeying orders from first her father and then looking after her priest-uncle. The agreement was that she would look after her uncle and then would inherit his estate … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Langley‘s The Variations. The book tells the story of people affected with the gift and the Agnes’s Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children, which cares for them. The gift means that they can commune with the dead and are attuned to musical resonances (and are often talented musicians). However … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Enright‘s The Wren. This novel tells off three generations, an irresponsible but apparently great Irish poet, his wife, their daughters and granddaughter. Phil, the poet, will abandon his wife, Terry, when she gets breast cancer and, as he goes to the US, essentially abandons his daughters, though … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Psychopompe [ Psychopomp]. Yes, psychopomp is a word ( literally the guide of souls. They are creatures, spirits, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. This is a (semi-)autobiographical novel and tells of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Méduses (The Madman and the Medusa). The novel is set in Tchicaya U Tam’si’s home town of Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo in June 1944. At the beginning of the novel, in the same week but not on the same day, two men die … Read more