The latest addition to my website is Xiaolu Guo‘s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers. This is her first book written in English though it is (deliberately) written in bad English. It is a semi-autobiographical account of her own arrival in London and her struggles with the language and the culture. She writes as she … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Xiaolu Guo‘s 我心中的石头镇 (Village of Stone). She is one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. This novel was the last of several that she wrote in Chinese and the only one of those that has been translated into English. Her subsequent novels have been written in English. It … Read more
The latest addition to my website is David Szalay‘s The Innocent. Szalay is another of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. This novel is written from the perspective of a committed MGB (precursor to the KGB) agent, Aleksandr, who Szalay cleverly makes us think of as a reasonable person, despite his firm commitment to the Soviet … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Taiye Selasi‘s
The latest addition to my website is Ned Beauman‘s The Teleportation Accident. It’s not a science fiction novel, more a pastiche of science fiction, US noir, particularly 1930s noir, conspiracy theories and spy fiction. It’s quirky, it’s funny, at times it is stupid but is a thoroughly enjoyable read and certainly different from your run-of-the-mill … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tahmima Anam‘s The Good Muslim. It tells the story of a feminist doctor in Bangladesh during the period immediately after independence in 1971 as well as in the mid-1980s. Maya’s brother, with whom she had been very close, has returned from the war a very changed man and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Naomi Alderman‘s The Lessons. Naomi Alderman is one of the Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Though this novel, an Oxford University and after novel, owes a certain amount to Brideshead Revisited, The Line of Beauty and The Secret History, it is still a good, well-written novel, telling the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jenni Fagan‘s Panopticon. Jenni Fagan is the only Scottish writer nominated for the Granta’s Best Young British Novelists list. This novel is not going to be everyone’s idea of fun, telling the story of Anais Hendricks, a fifteen-year old girl who has spent her life in care homes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Evie Wyld‘s After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. Evie Wyld was one of the Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and this is her first novel. (her second novel will appear next month, i.e. June 2013). This novel, according to Wyld, tells the story of traumatised men, not … Read more
Being away last week, I was able to peruse the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 4 at leisure and let others more competent than I comment on it. If you missed it, here they are: Naomi Alderman; Tahmima Anam; Ned Beauman; Jenni Fagan; Adam Foulds; Xiaolu Guo; Sarah Hall; Steven Hall; Joanna Kavenna; Benjamin … Read more