The latest addition to my website is Hamid Ismailov‘s Jinlar Bazmi (The Devil’s Dance). It tells the story of the last nine months of the life of Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy, spent in a Stalinist prison in 1937-38, prior to his execution as a bourgeois nationalist. Just prior to his arrest, Qodiriy had planned to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rana Haddad:‘s The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor. This is the first novel by a Syrian woman who has spent her adult live in England. This novel tells the story of a Syrian woman, daughter of an English woman and a Syrian heart surgeon, Dunya Noor who, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ricardo Piglia‘s Plata quemada (Money to Burn. This is a novelised account of an actual robbery from a bank armoured car in Buenos Aires. Piglia was a journalist at the time and reported on the case. The robbery succeeds but the police track down the robbers, with others … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Paolo Cognetti‘s Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains), which won the prestigious Strega Prize in Italy. It tells the story of Pietro, only child of two mountain lovers. His father, in particular, is very keen on climbing at high altitudes in the Italian Alps and Pietro gets the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is J. G. Farrell‘s Troubles. This novel, which won the Lost Man Booker Prize more than thirty years after the author’s death, is the first in Farrell’s acclaimed Empire Trilogy. It is set in the crumbling Majestic Hotel, a symbol of the decaying British Empire, located in County Wexford … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chico Buarque‘s Leite Derramado (Spilt Milk). The book is narrated by a hundred-year old Brazilian man, who is lying in a hospital bed in Rio de Janeiro, in a public hospital. He comes from a rich family but the family has fallen on hard times, partially through poor … Read more
Sheffield, a small town in Northern Tasmania, has since December 1986, become the town of murals. All over the town, you will see murals on walls and boards, most of them highly imaginative and colourful. Every year, the town holds a a mural festival. My favourite was the one you can see in my not … Read more
The picture on the left is Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand, where I am at the moment. Purely by chance the book I am reading is Paolo Cognetti’s Otto Montagne, to be published in English in March as Eight Mountains. The novel won the Italian Strega Prize and, as the title tells … Read more
Could this be the year of Manuel de Pedrolo, the great Catalan science fiction writer? His best-known novel Mecanoscrit del segon origen (Typescript of the Second Origin) is finally being published in English this April. As this article shows (link in Spanish), it is going to be The Year of Manuel de Pedrolo in Spain. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sharov‘s До и во время (Before and During). This book was written immediately after his Репетиции (Rehearsals) and covers some of the same topics, namely the subverting of Russian history, particularly the Russian Revolution, and the idea of a Christian Utopia. Our hero is Alyosha who, as … Read more