The latest addition to my website is Richard Powers‘ The Overstory. This is another first-class, long and complex novel from Powers. Its subject is trees, particularly the idea that trees are, to some degree, sentient, rational beings and the fact that trees are being chopped down in unprecedented numbers in the United States and elsewhere, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Scholastique Mukasonga‘s Notre-Dame du Nil (Our Lady of the Nile). The novel tells the story of an elite girls’ school in the highlands of Rwanda. We follow some of the individual girls and teachers, as well as the various events at the school. In particular, the school is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jorge Barón Biza‘s El desierto y su semilla (The Desert and Its Seed). This is a thinly disguised autobiographical novel, telling of the grim events that happened in the author’s family. Barón Biza’s father threw acid in the face of his wife (while they were discussing divorce with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Claudio Magris‘ Non luogo a procedere (Blameless). This novel continues Magris’ favourite theme of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. The unnamed protagonist has collected a mass of material relating to war, with a view to establishing a museum in Trieste. Sadly, at the start of the novel … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jon Fosse‘s Melancholia I (Melancholy). This book is about a real person, the Norwegian painter Lars Hertervig, though there is no indication in the English translation that he was real. Hertervig came from a poor background but was discovered and sponsored by a local businessman and was sent … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Glen James Brown‘s Ironopolis. This is a superb first novel, set in a sink estate in the North of England. We follow seven main characters (and a host of others) as they struggle with their lives – drugs, failed relationships, the regeneration of the estate, violence. However, Brown … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mieko Kawakami‘s ミス・アイスサンドイッチ (Ms Ice Sandwich). This is a charming novel about a ten year old boy, an only child whose father died when he was four, who is struggling with growing up. He takes a fancy to a woman he nicknames Ms Ice Sandwich, who works at … Read more
The latest addition to my website is J. G. Farrell‘s The Siege of Krishnapur, the second novel in Farrell’s post-colonial Empire trilogy. This one is based on the Siege of Lucknow of 1857, part of the Indian Rebellion against British occupation. The British seem intent on bringing civilisation to the Indians but the Indians do … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Shahriar Mandanipour‘s ابرو هلالیز (Moonbrow). This novel tells the story of Amir, a man from a wealthy family, who enjoys drinking, partying and sex. One time he goes too far, getting seriously drunk, and is arrested and flogged. On recovery, without telling his family, he joins the Iranian … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eugene Vodolazkin‘s Авиатор (The Aviator). This tells the story of Innokenty who wakes up in 1999, aged around thirty, but he was born in 1900. We learn about his past before the Revolution (good) and after the Revolution (terrible), including a horrendous time in one of Stalin’s labour … Read more