tmn The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 方舟さくら丸 (The Ark Sakura). A man we know only as Mole lives in a huge underground abandoned quarry, preparing himself for the inevitable nuclear Armageddon. He is well stocked with food, weapons and other necessities but has not found anyone suitable to share his fate. At … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Philippe Sollers‘ Femmes (Women). In this novel, Sollers moved away from his short experimental novel to a long everything novel. It is narrated by an American journalist, Will, who is partially based on Sollers, not least because he is writing a novel called Femmes (Women). Will is happily … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Stephen Paul Foster‘s Fatal Friendship. This is a postmodern, philosophical novel. Involving two well-to-do, very intellectual friends, based in St Louis. Nearly all the characters (or, perhaps all, as there may well be some I did not spot) are named after someone else,mainly philosophers (many of which I … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Agustina Bessa-Luís‘ Fanny Owen [Fanny Owen]. The book is set in the mid-nineteenth century. A fairly rich landowner José Augusto de Magalhães becomes friend with an impoverished writer, the very real Camilo Castelo Branco. Camilo has problems – financial, health, political. attempted suicide but José Augusto helps him … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Laura Alcoba‘s Par la forêt (Through the Forest). Laura Alcoba was born in Argentina but lives in France and writes in French. This novel tells the story of Griselda who has to flee Argentina with her(married) lover, Claudio, and they go to France. Initially he stays with his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hiromi Kawakami‘s 三度目The (Third Love). As is usual with Kawakami, this book is about love and its many complications. Riko falls in love with the older Naa-Chan when she is two and, much later, they will marry. However, Naa-Chan has a series of relationships which naturally upsets her. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Svetoslav Minkov and Konstantin Konstantinov‘s Сърцето в картонената кутия [The Heart in the Cardboard Box]. This is a short Bulgarian absurdist novel written by trwo writers and tells of a poet who has lost his actual, physical heart. Much of the novel gives the writers an excuse to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is László Krasznahorkai‘s Háború és háború (War and War). György Korin who works in a public records office in a small Hungarian town finds a strange manuscript and feels that it must be published in the centre of the world – New York, He sells everything and we follow … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s ホテル・アイリス (Hotel Iris). Mari, a seventeen year old Japanese woman works in her mother’s hotel and has no life of her own. There is an argument between a prostitute and her client in one of the rooms. Later Mari sees the man, a translator from Russian, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karen Duve‘s Dies ist kein Liebeslied (This is Not a Love Song). The title comes from a song by John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten’s post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd. It is narrated by a German woman, Anne Strelau, who is depressive, frequently overweight and does not fit … Read more