The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s La Place de l’Étoile (La Place de l’Étoile). This was Modiano’s first novel, published when he was twenty-two. It was a highly controversial as it viciously mocks French anti-Semitism but also French writers, Jews and Israel. It tells the story of Raphaël Schlemilovitch, a French Jew … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Igiaba Scego‘s Oltre Babilonia (Beyond Babylon). Scego is an Italian writer of Somali origin. This novel tells the stories of four women, Zuhra, daughter of Maryam and Elias (Zuhra she has never met Elias), Maryam, Mar, daughter of Miranda, an Argentinian woman now living in Italy, and an … Read more
The latest addition to my website is José María Arguedas‘s Los ríos profundos (Deep Waters). This novel, praised by Mario Vargas Llosa as one of the great Peruvian novels, is a semi-autobiographical novel. Arguedas’ mother died when he was two and a half. When his father remarried, his stepmother already had three children. He was … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Las curas milagrosas del Dr. Aira (The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira). As the title tells us, Dr Aira is a faith healer but his faith healing methodology is, even by normal faith healing standards and Aira’s usual modus operandi, somewhat unconventional, as it seems to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ma Jian‘s 中国梦 (China Dream). This is a satire of modern Chinese officialdom but, in particular, of President Xi’s China Dream project, which is a plan for Chinese domination, both internationally and domestically. Ma Daode, our hero, for want of a better word, is in charge of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tullio Avoledo‘s L’anno dei dodici inverni [The Year of the Twelve Winters]. An old man comes to visit a couple and their baby in 1982, saying he wants to write a book about babies born on Christmas Day as their baby, Chiara, was. He comes most years, yet … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ian McEwan‘s Machines Like Me. As the title implies, this is about robots. Set in an alternative 1982 where Thatcher has lost the Falklands War and Alan Turing did not kill himself but invented the Internet, it tells the story of Charlie Friend who, with an inheritance, bought … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Padraic Colum‘s The Flying Swans. Colum is better-known as a poet, playwright and recounter of Irish folk tales so this book – one of the two adult novels – he wrote – is relatively unknown, which is a pity, as it is a very fine story. It tells … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Spring. This is another superb novel from Smith in her four-seasons tetralogy. The key theme in this book is the harsh treatment meted out to refugees in the UK but there is much, more more to the novel. We follow two stories. Richard Lease is a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dritëro Agolli‘s Komisari Memo (The Bronze Bust). It is nice to know that Ismail Kadare is not the only Albanian novelist translated into English. While this book is not of the same calibre as Kadare, it is still a well-told tale, about Albanian partisans in World War II, … Read more