The latest addition to my website is Fiona McFarlane‘s Night Guest. This book is on the shortlist for the Australian Miles Franklin Award. It tells the story of Ruth, a seventy-five year old woman who lives alone in what had been the holiday home of her and her husband, Harry. Harry had died of a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is two novellas by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: 蘆刈 (Ashikari; later: The Reed Cutter) and 少将滋幹の母 (Captain Shigemoto’s Mother), both published in English in the same volume. The first is a short novella telling the tale of a man (the author) who decides to visit the Minase Shrine, site of an … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jorge Franco‘s El mundo de afuera [The World Outside], the winner of the prestigious Spanish Alfaguara Prize this year. This is an excellent novel, mainly set in Franco’s home town of Medellín, Colombia and mainly involving the kidnapping of a rich man, Don Diego Echavarría Misa. Don Diego … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Irène Némirovsky‘s David Golder (David Golder). It tells the story of a ruthless businessman in 1920s France, who specialises in oil. We see him outwitting, often by devious means, his competitors but also his colleagues. He has a large house in Biarritz, where his wife, Gloria, and daughter, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carmen Amoraga‘s La vida era eso [Such Was Life]. This is another book in my reading of this year’s literary prize winners/shortlisted books. This book won Spain’s Nadal Prize. It tells the story of Giuliana di Benedetto, an Argentinian of Italian origin who lives in Spain. At the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lucia Etxebarría‘s Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes [Beatrice and the Heavenly Bodies]. This is the story of a young Spanish woman, Beatriz de la Haya, and her life at around the age of twenty. For a while she lives with Mónica, in the house of Mónica’s parents, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kamel Daoud‘s Meursault, contre-enquête [Meursault, Counter Investigation], part of my effort at reading literary prize winners/shortlisted writers other than the Man Booker. This book has already won the prix François Mauriac, not to be confused with the prix François Mauriac and the Prix des cinq continents de la … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marilynne Robinson‘s Housekeeping. This is, of course, a book I should have read years ago but, with her new book just out, now was the time to do it. Apart from the fact, that this is one of the foremost US novels of the latter part of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Geoff Nicholson‘s The City Under the Skin. I notice that this is the sixteenth novel by Nicholson I have read and I can safely say that I have enjoyed them all. This follows the usual Nicholson pattern – a mysterious plot with twists and twists within twists, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Idris Ali‘s دنقلة : رواية نوبية (Dongola). This a novel by a Nubian. Nubia was a separate kingdom, in the south of Egypt, and north of Sudan. Indeed, as the book tells us, it was a Christian kingdom, till conquered by Egypt in the late Middle Ages. For … Read more