The latest addition to my website is Minae Mizumura‘s 母の遺産 (Inheritance of Mother). This is a feminist novel, about the changing role of women in Japan. We follow three generations of Japanese women, who all have their own problems, caused or exacerbated by their sex. We mainly follow Mitsuki and her older sister Natsuki who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Stafford‘s The Mountain Lion, a semi-autobiographical novel with the two main characters, brother and sister Roger and Molly Fawcett, being based on Stafford and her brother Dick, who were very close, as are Ralph and Molly. The Fawcetts live in California. Mr. Fawcett is dead but his … Read more
Here is another interesting article on that perennial issue of (lack of) women in translation. I am as guilty as the next man on this. I note that, of the seventy-eight books I have read so far this year, twenty-one are by women, i.e. 27%. That figure is quite high by my normal standards. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Un balcon en forêt (A Balcony in the Forest). This novel was based on Gracq’s own experiences in World War II and tells of Grange, a young lieutenant, put in charge of a bunker by the River Meuse, near the Belgian border, to stop advancing German … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ Mac y su contratiempo [Mac and His Problem]. Mac is a bankrupt builder who plans to rewrite the (very poor) novel, in the form of interrelated stories, written thirty years ago by a Barcelona neighbour, now a moderately famous writer This novel is narrated by a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joyce Cary‘s To Be a Pilgrim. This is the second in the trilogy, which started with Herself Surprised. This one tells the story of Tom Wilcher, last of his generation of Wilchers, an old man with heart problems. It is set just before World War II, as he … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Las conversaciones (Conversations). This is another brilliant long story/short novel from Aira, about his favourite subject of the boundaries between fiction and reality. It starts with two friends talking about a trashy Hollywood film they saw the previous night on TV, with the narrator mocking the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Walser‘s Geschwister Tanner (The Tanners). This was Walser’s first novel and a strange one it is, clearly based on himself and his family. The main character is Simon Tanner, a young man who drifts around from job to job, from town to town, from relationship to to … Read more
I an surprised that the English-language press has not picked up on the death of German writer Peter Härtling yesterday (10 July 2017), aged 84. He will be remembered for his poetry as much as for his prose fiction. His novel Eine Frau (A Woman) was translated into English and is well worth reading. I … Read more
Steven Moore is the author of two essential works on the history of the novel: The Novel: An Alternative History , the first one covering the beginnings to 1600 and the second one 1600 to 1800. Both will tell you far more than you ever knew about the history of the novel, not in an … Read more