tmn The latest addition to my website is Antonio Soler‘s El nombre que ahora digo (Soldiers in the Fog). The novel is set in the Spanish Civil War and follows the story of Gustavo Sintora. He had fled, like many others, from his hometown of Malaga, as Franco approached and after a few adventures ends up … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Grazia Deledda‘s Marianna Sirca. The book is set in Deledda’s native Sardinia. The eponymous heroine has worked all her life, obeying orders from first her father and then looking after her priest-uncle. The agreement was that she would look after her uncle and then would inherit his estate … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Langley‘s The Variations. The book tells the story of people affected with the gift and the Agnes’s Hospice for Acoustically Gifted Children, which cares for them. The gift means that they can commune with the dead and are attuned to musical resonances (and are often talented musicians). However … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Enright‘s The Wren. This novel tells off three generations, an irresponsible but apparently great Irish poet, his wife, their daughters and granddaughter. Phil, the poet, will abandon his wife, Terry, when she gets breast cancer and, as he goes to the US, essentially abandons his daughters, though … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Psychopompe [ Psychopomp]. Yes, psychopomp is a word ( literally the guide of souls. They are creatures, spirits, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. This is a (semi-)autobiographical novel and tells of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Méduses (The Madman and the Medusa). The novel is set in Tchicaya U Tam’si’s home town of Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo in June 1944. At the beginning of the novel, in the same week but not on the same day, two men die … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Attila Bartis‘ A vége (The End) This is a monumental semi-autobiographical novel, telling the story of Andras Szabad from his birth during the war to the post-communist era. The book opens when his father, also called Andras Szabad, is released from prison after serving three years for his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 余白の愛 [Love at the Margin]. Our unnamed heroine/narrator has suddenly had serious hearing problems . We learn later that her husband had left her the day before. From her room in the F clinic, she can see an old hotel and, two later, she will be … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karmele Jaio‘s Aitaren etxea (My Father’s House). This is a Basque feminist novel. We start with Ismael Alberdi, a succesful novelist who is struggling with his latest novel, not least because he is writing about the troubled period of the 1980s in the Basque country, which he kept … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Harald Voetmann‘s Alt under månen (Sublunar). The book follows part of the life of Tycho Brahe, allegedly the last great astronomer before the invention of the telescope. He is observing and mapping the night sky from his castle in Scania (now in Sweden). However around him,the world has … Read more