The latest addition to my website is Michel Houellebecq‘s Anéantir [Annihilate]. This is a fairly typical Houellebecq novel. It opens in late 2026. There are three main plot lines: a group of terrorists initially sends out some highly sophisticated CGI videos, using a technology not thought possible, and which appear initially on French government sites … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Diop‘s Frère d’âme (At Night All Blood Is Black). This book won the International Booker Prize in 2021. It tells the story of Alfa Ndiaye and his friend, Mademba Diop, Senegalese soldiers fighting for the French in World War I. Mademba is killed by a German pretending … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s Chevreuse This novel follows the usual Patrick Modiano modus operandi. A man (Modiano’s alter ego) looks back, both from the age of seventy and the age of twenty. He meets various suspicious characters, a mysterious woman, visits a mysterious flat in Paris and revisits the house … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Michel Butor‘s L’Emploi du temps (Passing Time). I had already read and reviewed this novel (link is to the old review) but a new edition of the English translation has just appeared from Pariah Press so I have read that. (I read it in French for the previous … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Olivier Targowla‘s Narcisse sur un fil (Narcisse on a Tightrope). This is another fascinating discovery from the recently reborn Dalkey Archive Press. Narcisse has been in an institution for seventeen years. He does not seem to know why nor do we or the doctors. You’ve never had all … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Danielle Mémoire‘s Lecture publique suivie d’un débat (Public Reading Followed by Discussion). Last year John O’Brien, visionary founder of the Dalkey Archive Press sadly died after an illness. The Press was taken over by Deep vellum, with Will Evans as CEO and Chad Post of Open Letter Books … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Henri Calet‘s La Fièvre des Polders [Polder Fever]. Calet’s third novel is set in Burrh, a small Belgian town near the Dutch border, where there are polders, i.e. land reclaimed from the sea and rivers. Ward Waterwind sells beer but drinks too many of the profits and spends … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Henri Calet‘s La Belle Lurette [A Long Time Ago]. This is a grim autobiographical novel about a boy, born in 1900. His parents are both criminals (money forging, prostitution, petty theft). His father is violent, frequently hitting his mother before running off with her daughter from a previous … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hervé Le Tellier‘s L’Anomalie (The Anomaly). We follow the stories of various different and seemingly unconnected people, till we gradually learn that they were all on a Paris-New York flight in 2021. The flight was caught in a storm and badly buffeted but eventually came out with only … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Serre‘s Les Gouvernantes (The Governesses). This is very much a post-modern French fairy tale. The austere Austeur family engage three governesses, firstly to look after their four boys and secondly because M. Austeur wants a bit of chaos in his life, which he does not get from … Read more