The latest addition to my website is Andrei Bitov‘s Преподаватель симметрии (The Symmetry Teacher). This is a wonderful novel, nominally starting with a Russian man trying to reconstruct a story he read some time ago in English (which he does not speak very well), though we do not get to the reconstructed novel till well … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gaito Gazdanov‘s Вечер у Клэр (An Evening with Claire). This was Gazdanov’s first novel, written when he was only twenty-six and living in Paris, after escaping from revolutionary Russia, via Istanbul. The book, which has been called Proustian, is essentially autobiographical, telling the story of Kolya Sosedov, as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vladislav Otroshenko‘s Приложение к фотоальбому (Addendum to a Photo Album). This a hilarious and somewhat fanciful account of a Cossack family of thirteen brothers, the children of Annushka and (with one exception) Malakh. The one exception is the somewhat blustering Semion, the eleventh son, who is conceived and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vasily Golovanov‘s Остров или Оправдание бессмысленных путешествий [Island or A Justification for Meaningless Travel]. This is a wonderful non-fiction novel, in which the author describes his fascination with and his visits to Kolguyev Island, a remote island off the coast of Northern Russia. Professionally he has worked as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Взятие Измаила [The Taking of Izmail]. This is one of his earlier novels, not (yet?) translated into English but, in my view more enjoyable than his two novels that have been translated into English. The blurb on the back of the French edition (which I read) … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Письмовник (The Light and the Dark). It tells the story of two lovers, Volodya and Sasha, apparently writing letters to one another though, as we eventually learn, they appear to be living a hundred years apart. He is a soldier, appointed to be staff clerk, in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Венерин Волос (Maidenhair). This is a very complex novel that romps through Russian history, primarily of the past hundred years but also dips into earlier history, including Xenophon. An unnamed Russian-German interpreter is the link between the various stories. He works for the Swiss authority dealing … Read more
Last year, starting in March, I read nothing but Icelandic novels for a month or so. I found the experience very interesting, getting different perspectives of the same country in a short space of time, so I decided to repeat the exercise with another country. I did think about New Zealand, as I have recently … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nuruddin Farah‘s Crossbones, the third book in his trilogy about Somalia at the beginning of this century and the the efforts of expatriate Somalis visiting the country to improve things. This one sees three visitors – Jeebleh, who visited ten years previously in the first novel in the … Read more
Sadly, two writers whom I have not read but should have done, died yesterday. Assia Djebar was an Algerian writer and wrote novels with a feminist viewpoint. She was also a member of the Académie française. Several of her works have been translated into English. André Brink was a noted South African novelist, best known … Read more