The latest addition to my website isSamantha Harvey‘s Orbital. The novel is set entirely on the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth (sixteen times a day), with a multinational (US, UK Italy Japan, Russia) crew of six. But don’t let that put you off, as it won the 2024 Booker Prize and deservedly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maylis de Kerangal‘s Corniche Kennedy [Kennedy Corniche]. The novel is set in Marseilles, primarily on a platform overlooking Keenedy Corniche and the sea. A group of teenagers go there to sunbathe and hang out but also to jump from various high ledges into the sea. They are joined … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Radwa Ashour‘s ثلاثية غرناطة (Granada Trilogy). This tells the story of an extended Arab family who, at the beginning of the book are living in Granada from the fall of Granada in 1492 to the expulsion of the Arabs just over a century later. At the beginning there … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jonathan Coe‘s The Proof of My Innocence.A blogger investigating right-wing plotting attends a right-wing conference the week LizTruss is appointed British Prime Minister and is brutally murdered at the conference. His adopted daughter and the daughter of one of his friends investigate and uncover dirty right-wing dealings, a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Das falsche Gewicht (Weights and Measures). Anselm Eibenschütz had been a soldier but now marries but has to leave the army and gets a job as an Inspector of Weights and Measures. Most of the merchants are crooked using, as the German title tells using false … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Fragments d’un paradis (Fragments of a Paradise). Unusually for Giono, this novel is set not in the beautiful French countryside but at sea. We follow a maritime expedition that sets out in 1940, to escape the problems of civilisation as the captain will continue to remind … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Portante‘s Projets pour un naufrage prémédité [Projects for a Premeditated Shipwreck]. This novel, from Luxembourg, is strange from the cryptic title to the convoluted plot. The hypersensitive Laure and unfaithful Frédéric, married for ten years, are seemingly splitting up. He thought he was sending her away but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s ミーナの行進 (Mina’s Matchbox). Tomoko’s father has died and her mother has to study so Tomoko is sent off to her aunt, her mother’s sister, who is married to a man who runs a successful energy drinks company. She gets on well with all the family, particularly … Read more
The latest addition to my website consists of two novels published in one volume. The first is Daur Nachkebia‘s Берег ночи (The Shore of Night). It is set during the Abkazia-Georgia conflict as well as before and after that conflict. The narrator is Beslan who fought in the conflict and he haas been given the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ghazaleh Alizadeh‘s خانه ادریسیها (The House of The Edrisis (Volume 1). The novel is set in what we know as Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan, but it had been part of Persia and is now (1910s) part of Russia. The Edrisis are a decaying family living in a large … Read more