tmn The latest addition to my website is Ian McEwan‘s The Children Act. This novel did not make the Man Booker 20124 longlist and, while it certainly is not a bad book, it is not McEwan back to his old form. It tells the story of Fiona Maye, a High Court judge in the Family Division, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Mitchell‘s The Bone Clocks. While this did make the Man Booker 2014 longlist, it surprisingly did not make the shortlist. I suspect that the fantasy elements in the book, which at times come close to being Dan Brown-ish, may have put off some of the judges, as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Orhan Pamuk‘s Cevdet Bey ve Oğullari [Cevdet Bey and His Sons]. This is his first book, which has yet to be translated into English, though is available in several other languages. It is not like his later books, in that it is a realist family saga, set over … Read more
I have just returned from a trip to Sweden and Lithuania. In Sweden, I stayed in the small town of Växjö (small but with a large university in its outskirts). Despite its size, it is the birthplace of several writers, including Jonas Jonasson, author of Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann (The Hundred-Year-Old … Read more
I am not terribly impressed with this year’s shortlist: Joshua Ferris: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North Karen Joy Fowler: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Howard Jacobson: J Neel Mukherjee: The Lives of Others Ali Smith: How to be Both One Englishman, a Scot, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 鍵 (The Key). This is a highly erotic novel, written entirely in the form of diary entries by an older, unnamed man and his younger wife, Ikuko. The husband is concerned that, as he is getting older, his sexual performance has deteriorated. Ikuko, while still loving … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sebastiano Vassalli‘s Il cigno (The Swan). This is Vassalli’s Mafia novel, for which he got some criticism, not least because he is a Northerner and was accused of not understanding Sicilian culture. It tells the story of a historical event – the murder of Emanuele Notarbartolo, carried out … Read more
The blog In lieu of a field guide has published a list of Philippine novels in English translation. Always interested in novels in translation from countries which I know little about, I checked the nine novels on the list. Sadly, only the two José Rizal novels showed up on the site of a well-known online … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sebastiano Vassalli‘s La chimera (The Chimera). Set in Italy at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, this is a novel about witchcraft or, rather, it isn’t, it is about a young woman accused of witchcraft for the very simple crimes of a) being … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marina Warner‘s The Leto Bundle. This is a superb novel about identity, refugees, immigration, religion, the effect of war and political upheaval, particularly on women, as well, of course, as we would expect from Marina Warner, about myth and its role both in the past and for us … Read more