The latest addition to my website is Patrick Roegiers‘ Le Bonheur des Belges [The Happiness of the Belgians]. It is both a response to Hugo Claus‘ Het verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium) as well as to the political and economic crisis Belgium has been facing in recent times. Belgium is the only country … Read more
The latest addition to my website is A. M. Homes‘ May We Be Forgiven, the winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Most people, including me, thought that Bring Up the Bodies would win and were quite surprised that this novel won. While I very much enjoyed Bring Up the Bodies, I think May … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sulaiman Addonia‘s The Consequences of Love, the first Eritrean novel on my website. It tells the story of Naser, a young Eritrean, who has escaped from the war in that country and is now living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is starved of female affection, till a woman … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carmen Boullosa‘s Texas. The novel is about an event taking place in 1859 between a Mexican and an US sheriff in a thinly disguised version of Brownsville, Texas, leading to sides being taken by the two nationalities (with the Native Americans, slaves and former slaves and other itinerant … Read more
The last two books I have added to my site have raised issues about nationalities, as I have defined them on my site. Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go raised issues about Selasi’s nationality. She was born in London, grew up in the United States and has a Ghanaian Father and a Nigerian mother. As with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adem Demaçi‘s Gjarpinjtë e gjakut [The Snakes of the Blood], the first Kosovan novel on my website. Sadly, this novel is not available in English and, as far as I can tell, there is no Kosovan novel, available in English translation. The novel is a short one and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Taiye Selasi‘s
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s The Closest Possible Union. The novel is set almost entirely on a slave ship and tells the story of Tom Beauchamp, a fourteen-year old boy, son of the owner of the ship (though this is known only to the captain and first mate), his fears and … Read more
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