The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ Fragments de Lichtenberg (Fragments of Lichtenberg) . This is another glorious post-modern romp, this time taking as it starting point the relatively unknown German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg left behind a collection of what he called Sudelbücher in German, which translates as, approximately, scrap books … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ricardo Piglia‘s Respiración artificial (Artificial Respiration). This novel, published during Argentina’s Dirty War, goes around that issue, focussing on history and literature and, using, to some degree the detective novel form. The first part involves an exchange of letters between writer Emilio Renzi and his uncle Marcelo Maggi. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ La réfutation majeure (The Major Refutation). This is a brilliant pastiche, allegedly the French version of a sixteenth century work by the very real Franciscan monk Antonio de Guevara. No manuscript of this work has been found and, even if it did exist, it is not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Stafford‘s Boston Adventure. Jean Stafford had a strong reputation when this book was released in 1944 but her reputation seems to have faded (this book is currently out of print, though easily obtainable). The book tells the story of Sonia Marburg, twelve years old when the book … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Yo era una mujer casada [I Was a Married Woman], one of his stories that has not (yet) been published in English. This one tells of a woman, Gladys, in a terrible marriage. Her husband abuses her, drinks, does drugs and takes all her money (she … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Walser‘s Jakob von Gunten (Jakob von Gunten). This was an unusual novel for the time, as it is told inside the head of the protagonist, a young man who fantasises, has strange dreams, is full of contradictions and may be an unreliable narrator. Like Walser himself, Jakob … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joyce Cary‘s Herself Surprised. This is the first in a trilogy which primarily aims to give, in each volume, the points of view of the three main characters. This one gives the point of view of Sara Monday. She starts as a housekeeper, marries the son of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Le Grand Troupeau (To the Slaughterhouse). This is Jean Giono’s World War I novel, telling of the horrors of that war. We follow both the fate of those left behind (but near the front), older men and women in this novel, as well as their loved … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Au château d’Argol (The Castle of Argol). This was Gracq’s first novel and was rejected by Gallimard, no doubt because it is somewhat overwrought. It tells of a rich, noble scion buying, sight unseen, a remote castle in Brittany, to which he invites Herminien, his best … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Cankar‘s Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy). Cankar is often considered the father of the modern Slovenian novel. This is a very sad story, set entirely in a charity ward for girls in a Viennese hospital. All the girls have some unpleasant disease … Read more