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
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 François Mauriac‘s Le Mystère Frontenac (UK: The Frontenac Mystery; US: The Frontenacs). Unlike some of his other novels, where the family is seen as insidious and threatening, in this novel the family comes across as much more friendly, even if, at times, some of the individuals feel forced … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mohamed Toihiri‘s La République des Imberbes [The Republic of the Beardless], the first novel from the Comoros on my website. The Comoros have had a tumultuous history since independence from France in 1975 and this novel gives a barely fictionalised account of a specific period when the ruthless … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Kakovitch‘s Mount Semele, the first Assyrian novel on my website. Most people probably think of the Assyrians as a fierce, warlike people who appeared in the Bible (and also in Byron’s poem The Destruction of Sennacherib) and who were essentially wiped out by the Babylonians and Medes … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sum Marky‘s Vila Flogá [Villa Flogá], the first, and probably last, novel from São Tomé e Príncipe on my site. As far as I can tell there is no novel from São Tomé e Príncipe that has been published in English or, indeed, any other language but Portuguese. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joanna Scott‘s Fading, My Parmacheene Belle, the author’s first novel. Joanna Scott is one of those authors who writes very intelligent novels but somehow seems to get lost in the shuffle. This book, for example, is out of print. It is part fable, part extended fishing metaphor, part … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sunjeev Sahota‘s Ours are the Streets. Sahota is one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. The novel is the notebooks of a young Englishman of Pakistani origin who moves from being a normal young man, interested in getting on at university, sex, recreational drugs and bettering himself who, … Read more