The latest addition to my website is Esther Kinsky‘s Hain [Grove]. LikeAm Fluss (River), her previous work – this novel is about the travels of an unnamed narrator, clearly Kinsky herself, in this case in Italy, but off the usual tourist track, to Olevano Romano and the Po Valley. This book is coloured by the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hamid Ismailov‘s Hayy-ibn-Yakzan (Of Strangers and-Bees). This is another superb book from Hamid Ismailov, the Uzbek novelist, about exile and, indeed about bees. We follow the travels and travails of the fictitious Sheikhov (possibly an alter ego of the author) but also of the Uzbekistan-born, Persian philosopher Avicenna … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rodrigo Márquez Tizano‘s Yakarta (Jakarta). This is a dystopian novel from Mexico, describing a country called Atlantika, where a horrible epidemic, with the virus vector carried by rats, strikes the country regularly. The latest one – the Ź-Bug – has been brought under control but everyone knows another … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maik Nwosu‘s Alpha Song. Our hero, a Nigerian who adopts the name Taneba Taneba when he is estranged from his father’s family, never really finds where he fits in and where is going. His uncle gets him a job at the post office (twice) but that does not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Princesa primavera [Princess Springtime]. This is something of a subversion of the traditional fairy tale. The eponymous princess lives in a palace on a small island off the coast of Panama. Apart from servants, she is alone. Most of the locals survive from fishing. She, however, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mircea Cărtărescu‘s Levantul [The Levant]. This is a mock epic, which, in the original Romanian was written primarily in verse form, but, for the translations (French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish but not English) was primarily converted to prose, with some verse. It tells of the adventures of a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mario Vargas Llosa‘s Tiempos recios [Hard Times]. The novel deals with the overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, by Guatemalan forces, supported by the CIA and the US Ambassador to Guatemala. He was primarily overthrown because he had wanted to tax the United … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rodrigo Fresán‘s La parte inventada (The Invented Part). This is a long, rambling novel, the first of the trilogy, about Fresán’s favourite subject – writers and writing. We follow the story of the Writer and his career, from his childhood to his later life, when his writing is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miloš Crnjanski‘s Roman o Londonu [London Novel]. This is a long and sad tale, based on Crnjanski’s own life, about a Russian prince, Nikolai Rodionovich Repnin, and his wife, Nadia,in exile in London. They had fled Crimea in 1922 and travelled around Europe but, because of World War … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nicolás Giacobone‘s El cuaderno tachado (The Crossed-Out Notebook). Giacabone is a scriptwriter so it is not surprising that his first novel tells the story of a scriptwriter, Pablo Betances. Pablo had wanted to be a musician but did not make it so became a writer and then a … Read more