The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s La costurera y el viento (The Seamstress and the Wind). This is another madcap adventure by Aira, as a mother (the eponymous seamstress) thinks her young son is in a lorry that is heading to Patagonia (the end of the world) and sets off in a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Liana Badr‘s رج عين المرآة (Eye of the Mirror). This novel is set in the Tal el-Zaatar refugee camp in the mid-1970s and recounts the events of Siege of Tel al-Zaatar, as seen through the eyes of one Palestinian family and, in particular, the eldest daughter, Aisha. Aisha … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rainald Goetz‘s Irre (Insane). The book is about both a psychiatrist called Raspe and a multimedia artist called Rainald Goetz, both of whom worked in a psychiatric clinic which both have left by the end of the book. Goetz was in real life a psychiatrist and he has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Le Hussard sur le toit (US/UK: The Horseman on the Roof; UK: The Hussar on the Roof). This novel is set in the 1830s during a major cholera pandemic. Angelo Pardi is an Italian revolutionary, fleeing Italy after killing a baron in a duel. He arrives … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joyce Cary‘s Except the Lord, the second of a trilogy that started with Prisoner of Grace. In this previous novel, we followed the adult life of Chester Nimmo, as told by his ex-wife, Nina. This book is told by Chester himself and is mainly about his childhood. He … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dana Todorović:‘s Tragična sudbina Morica Tota (The Tragic Fate of Moritz Toth). This is a clever tale of an unemployed punk rocker, the eponymous Moritz Toth, who finds salvation as the prompter for the lead tenor in Turandot. However, he also finds that at first one and then … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ricardo Romero‘s La habitación del presidente (The President’s Room). This is Romero’s first work published in English, from a new press, Charco Press. The narrator, a boy, lives in a house with his parents and brothers. The house, like others in the neighbourhood, has a president’s room, set … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Boualem Sansal‘s Rue Darwin. This is a superb work by Sansal which tells the story of Yazid, an Algerian, the same age as Sansal, who takes his mother to Paris to die (of cancer) and where she can see her other children, Yazid being the only one still … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ricardo Piglia‘s La ciudad ausente (The Absent City). This is a complex novel – a detective story, a political novel, a Joycean extravaganza, a Bildungsroman and a city novel, set during Argentina’s dirty war but concerned not only with the struggle against the brutal government but with two … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zigmunds Skujiņš‘ Vīrietis labākajos gados (A Man in His Prime). This is one of two novels written by Skujiņš translated into English from Latvian. This one was published by the Soviet publishers Progress and is long since out of print and difficult to obtain. It tells the story … Read more