tmn The latest addition to my website is Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Burning Grass, a well-written and lively novel about a Fulani family in Nigeria. The patriarch, Mai, is afflicted with the wandering sickness, which means that, without warning or being able to stop himself, he suddenly disappears, wandering about, often chasing a bird. During his wanderings, he … Read more
Jonathan Coe‘s novels apparently sell better in France. Coe claims that British people can see how current politics is impacting on the country every day in the papers and on TV rather than look for it in his novels. Ignoring his rather dubious grammar, I would argue that Coe is one of those English writers … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Claude Ollier‘s Déconnection (later: Obscuration) (Disconnection). Ollier was one of the French writers associated with Editions de Minuit and the nouveau roman but he drifted away from them and set his own course. This novel consists of two stories told in parallel which may or may not be … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Herta Müller‘s Herztier (The Land of Green Plums). This is a remorselessly grim story of life in Ceausescu’s Romania, told by an unnamed female narrator. At the beginning of the book, she is sharing a room at college with five other young women, including Lola. Much of what … Read more
I have made no secret of the fact that I consider Rafael Chirbes to have been a brilliant writer and his untimely death a few months ago was a great tragedy. His last book published will be out in English next year. I am now glad to learn that a Rafael Chirbes foundation is to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Herta Müller‘s Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel). This tells the story of Leopold Auberg, a seventeen year old German-Romanian. When the Soviets capture Romania at the end of World War II, all those of German origin aged between seventeen and forty-five are rounded up and sent to a labour … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kathryn Davis‘ Duplex. This novel takes a fairly conventional story – a street somewhere in the US, with a boy and girl growing up together and destined to be married but somehow not quite working it out. However, to really confuse us, Davis has thrown in both strong … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kathryn Davis‘ The Thin Place, a brilliant but understated novel about spirituality, the forces of nature and the role they play in our lives and the often arbitrariness of life, but all firmly rooted in the real world. The real world, in this case, is a small New … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Stratis Tsirkas‘ Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (Drifting Cities. This is a trilogy of novels, often compared to The Alexandria Quartet. Like that book, it takes place during World War II, though each book is set in a different city – Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria, respectively. The story is centred around … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gafur Gulom‘s Shum bola [The Rascal, a light-hearted Uzbek novel which has been translated into German but not into English. This tells the tale of a fourteen-year old Uzbek boy from Tashkent, who because of his lies and mischievousness, gets himself into a series of amusing scrapes. He … Read more