The latest addition to my website is Llorenç Villalonga‘s Mort de dama [Death of a Lady]. This was Villalonga’s first book and was a wicked satire on the Mallorcan upper class of the day. The eponymous lady is Obdulia de Monteada and, as the title and the beginning of the book tell us, she is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zülfü Livaneli‘s Huzursuzluk (Disquiet). A Turkish, Istanbul-based journalist, Ibrahim, learns that Hussein, whom he knew as a child when they were growing up in Mardin, near the Syrian border, was killed by Neo-Nazis in Germany. He goes back to Mardin and finds out that Hussein, a compassionate man, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yan Lianke‘s 堅硬如水 (Hard Like Water). This story is set primarily in the village of Chenggang during the Cultural Revolution but this is not a serious Cultural Revolution novel but a mocking satire of it. Our hero, Gao Aijun, married with two children, meets Hongmei and decided he … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miljenko Jergović‘s Rod (Kin). This is an 800-page family novel, as the author calls it, but do not let that put you off. It is essentially the stories (mini-novels) of, primarily, his mother’s family, going back to the beginning of the twentieth century but also of his extended … Read more
We managed to travel further afield than the neighbouring town for the first time for a while this week and headed down to Dorset for a long break. En route we stopped off at Athelhampton, a privately owned house, dating from the fifteen century, though people had built on the site well before that. It … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mohamed Kheir‘s عباصلأا تلافإة (Slipping). This book is seemingly a book of separate stories but, gradually, they nearly all get some connection to one of the two main themes. The first is the story of Seif, a magazine journalist who has to show Bahr, an Egypian exile round … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dag Solstad‘s Ellevte roman, bok atten (Novel 11, Book 18). This book tells the story of Bjørn Hansen, a man with a successful civil service career and married with a son. He meets and falls for another woman, Turid Lammers. He abruptly leaves his wife and family and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Neglected Writer. The eponymous neglected writer may well refer to Sharp himself, a British experimental writer who is still relatively unknown. However, it probably refers to Eliot Blount, the narrator of this novel. Blount is an Englishman in Hollywood in 1932. He receives an anonymous phone … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Emilio Fraia‘s Sevastopol (Sevastopol). This consists of three linked stories inspired by Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches, though only one is actually set (in part) in Sevastopol. All three, however, are about people struggling with relationships and struggling to find meaning in their life. The first is about a Brazilian … Read more