The latest addition to my website is Ghassan Zaqtan‘s نقل القديم مع الستائر، (An Old Carriage with Curtains). This is an episodic novel with the narrator recounting episodes of his life and the life of his family, in particular his mother, since the Nakba. We learn of Zakhariyya where his mother was born. She longs … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adania Shibli‘s وسفر الاختفاءتفصيل ثانوي (Minor Detail). This book has been in the news recently (October 2023) as Shibli and her book were cancelled at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book is divided into two parts. The first is set in rhe Negev Desert, close to the Egyptian … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jon Fosse‘s Trilogien (Trilogy). This work consists of three linked novels. We start with Alida and Asle. Both are seventeen. Asle’s father is dead and his mother now dies, meaning he has to leave the boathouse where he and his mother lived. Alida’s father is also dead and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jon Fosse‘s Kvitleik (A Shining). A man who lives alone drives his car into a forest and gets stuck. There has been no sign of human habitation for a while so he does not know what to do. He sees a path into the forest and thinks it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Stella Gaitano‘s رواح إدو (Edo’s Souls).This is the story of South Sudan, with the background being the upheavals that led to South Sudan breaking away from Sudan, something that affects most of the protagonists. Edo had the misfortune to lose nine of her ten children before their first … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s La Danseuse [The Dancer]. Modiano’s latest follows the basic plot line of many of his earlier novels. A young man, presumably Modiano’s alter ego, has arrived in Paris and is struggling to make a living. He associates with a group of people, some of whom have … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sara Gallardo‘s Enero (January). The novel is set on an Argentinian farm and we follow the story of the just sixteen Nefer, the youngest of three sisters. The oldest, Porota has recently married and at the wedding, Nefer was so annoyed at Negro, to whom she is attracted, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson‘s Dartmouth Park. Our narrator is Philip Notman, a fifty-something historian. At the beginning of the book he is attending a conference in Bergen, where he meets a fellow and younger academic, Inés. There is a spark but nothing happens. However on the way home he has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carmine Abate‘s Il ballo tondo (The Round Dance). Abate comes from the Arbëreshë community, descendants of Albanians who fled the Ottomans between between the 14th and the 18th centuries and settled in Italy. This novel is set in Hora, a small Arbëreshë town in Calabria and for most … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rosemary Tonks‘ The Halt during the Chase. This novel wittily tells the story of a few eccentric characters in the London suburb of Hampstead in 1979. Our heroine/narrator is the thirty-one year old Sophie who has a decidedly ambiguous relationship with both her widowed mother and her not-quite … Read more