tmn I was a long time subscriber to the French literary magazine La Quinzaine Littéraire, founded by the wonderful writer and editor Maurice Nadeau, who died in 2013 aged 102! He was writing and contributing till almost the end. After his death, financial troubles which had occurred before Nadeau’s death re-emerged and publication was suspended for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Abdulaziz Al-Farsi‘s تبكي الأرض– يضحك زحل (Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs), the first Omani novel on my website. It is a gently mocking satire of a village in Oman where the majority of people seem to be conspiring against others, have guilty secrets which are only gradually revealed (to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Survive the Peace. This novel is set at the end of the Biafran War. James Odugo is a radio journalist who has been travelling around Biafra, broadcasting news of the war, with the radio station continually having to move as the Federals get closer. James’ wife … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alexander Chayanov‘s Путешествие моего брата Алексея в страну крестьянской утопии (The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia). This is a 1920 novel set in 1984 (yes, thirty-nine years before George Orwell got there), written by a well-respected Soviet agricultural economist, whose political views … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Жизнь насекомых (The Life of Insects). This is a thoroughly original book which takes as its premise the idea that insects can also have human form and behave and act like humans. We have mosquitoes who travel the world, looking for the ideal blood to suck, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Edmundo Paz Soldán‘s Los vivos y los muertos [The Living and the Dead]. It is based on events in the 1990s in the town of Dryden, New York, when nine people died in the space of three months, seven of whom were murdered. Paz Soldán lived in nearby … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergei Lebedev‘s Предела забвения (Oblivion). The Russian title means something like The Limits of Oblivion, though much of the novel is about recovering lost memories, specifically lost memories of the Soviet era of prison camps. The unnamed narrator is rescued twice by a man he calls Grandfather II. … Read more
I have never really understand why others have their annual reviews early in December. Don’t they read any books between then and the end of the year? I certainly do. Like others, I have been browsing the end of year reviews – you can catch up with them at Large-Hearted Boy. I was surprised to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marianne Fritz‘s Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse (The Weight of Things), the first novel by the Austrian writer Marianne Fritz to be translated into English, thirty-seven years after it was first published. The novel tells the story of Berta Schrei nee Faust. During World War II, she loses her … Read more
We spent the couple of days after Christmas in Amsterdam. As you can see at the left, much of our time was looking at works of art. This painting is, of course, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, from the Rijksmuseum. and I would estimate that there were around five hundred people in the room when I took … Read more