The latest addition to my website is Vítězslav Nezval‘s Valérie a týden divů (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders) . Nezval was a committed surrealist, friends with André Breton and other surrealists when he wrote this book in 1932 (thirteen years before it was finally published in Czech). It is a spoof Gothic novel with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergei Lebedev‘s Дебютант (Untraceable). This is a story inspired by but not based on the Salisbury poisonings when Russian agents used the nerve agent Novichok to try and kill a former Russian double agent and his daughter. This novel tells of a scientist who develops a similar agent, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Minae Mizumura‘s 私小説 from left to right (An I-Novel). This book was written and published before her other two novels published in English and, unusually, contains lots of English words and is written horizontally (as the Japanese title tells us) and not vertically as is normal in Japanese. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Brenda Lozano‘s Cuaderno ideal (Loop). This is the story of a modern-day Penelope (from The Odyssey). Our thirty-year old Mexican woman lives with Jonás, whose mother has recently died. She was Spanish so Jonás, his sister and his father go off to Spain to trace her roots, with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Iraj Pezeshkzad‘s حافظ ناشنيده پند (Hafez in Love). This is a wonderful book about a period in the life of Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, better known as Hafez, the fourteenth century Persian poet. A new ruler has taken over (by force) in Shiraz, where this book is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tahi Saihate‘s 星か獣になる季節 (Astral Season Beastly Season). Two seventeen- year old boys are obsessed with a J-Pop star, attending all her concerts. When she is accused of murder, the two, who are in the same class but are polar opposites and have rarely spoken to one another before, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Max Besora‘s Aventures i desventures de l’insòlit i admirable Joan Orpí, conquistador i fundador de la Nova Catalunya (Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí). This is a wonderful, post-modern novel about the very real Joan Orpí who founded New Barcelona (now Barcelona), Venezuela. While … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dmitri Lipskerov‘s О нём и о бабочках (The Tool and the Butterflies). This is a complex story, focusing on one Arseny Iratov who, at the beginning of the novel, is rich (money made from Soviet-era illegal currency speculation, and later dealing in precious stones and an architectural business … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Andriy Kokotiukha‘s Адвокат iз Личакiвської (The Lawyer from Lychakiv Street). It is set in 1908, primarily in Lviv, now in Ukraine but then called Lemberg and in the Austro-Hungarian empire, with a majority Polish-speaking population. Our hero is Klymentiy Nazarovych Koshovy, known as Klym, a lawyer from Kyiv, … Read more
Every year I plan to give an indication of books published 50, 100, 150 and 200 years ago and every year I forget. This year I remembered so here goes. 1821 Not a bumper year. It included Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years), the follow-up to his better-known Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s … Read more