The latest addition to my website is László Krasznahorkai‘s Aprómunka egy palotaért (Spadework for a Palace) This is a short novel about a New York librarian called herman melvill (sic). He has various obsessions, including the idea that only librarians should be able to visit libraries. He gradually becomes obsessed with his namesake Herman Melville … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb: Le livre des soeurs [The Book of the Sisters]. The book tells of Tristane, born to parents who are more interested in one another than they are in their daughter so she is often left to her own devices. She teaches herself to speak, to read … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ibrahim Al-Koni‘s ـلـيـل فـي حـق الـنـهـار، روايـ (The Night Will Have Its Say). The book is set in the late seventh/early eighth centuries in North Africa during the Umayyad Caliphate. The Ummayyads are aiming to conquer the Berbers to convert them to Islam but the Berbers, under al-Kahina, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sonallah Ibrahim‘s العمامة والقبعة (The Turban and the Hat). The novel takes place during the French occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801. The historical figure Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti wrote the only surviving account of the occupation from the Egyptian point of view. In this novel, the unnamed … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sylvie Germain‘s Jours de colère (Days of Anger). This book, a reissue by publishers Dedalus, is a classic modern French novel, mixing Gothic and Greek tragedy in a remote wooded area of France. Ambroise Maupertuis witnesses an altercation between Vincent Corvol and his wife Catherine and blackmails him … Read more
The latest addition to my website is
The latest addition to my website is Brenda Lozano‘s Brujas (Witches). We follow the story of three Mexican women. Paloma is, in fact, a muxe, assigned male at birth but who dresses and behaves in ways otherwise associated with women. She starts off as Gaspar, following the family tradition of being a curandero, a traditional … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sorokin‘s Теллурия (Telluria). This novel is set in a future where Russia and Europe have splintered into smaller states and seem to have been recently fighting a Christianity-Islam war which the Christians have won. The story is told in fifty vignettes, recounting the current siltation and the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Salvador Elizondo‘s El hipogeo secreto (The Secret Crypt). The novel is about a writer called Salvador Elizondo who is writing a book called The Secret Crypt. We start with a disparate group called Urkreis and we gradually learn that they are, possibly, the characters of this novel. Gradually, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergey Kuznetsov‘s Хоровод воды (The Round Dance of Water). This is a novel that tells the story of an extended family, from the Revolution to the present day, though with the main focus on the post-Soviet era. Kuznetsov himself stated that he wanted to write about my contemporaries … Read more