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
The most recent addition to my website is Esther Tusquets‘ ¡Bingo!. This was to be Tusquets’ last novel and, sadly, it has not been translated into English or, indeed, any other language except for Portuguese. Yes, it is about bingo (and it seems from the preface that Tusquets herself was not averse to playing the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Claude Simon‘s L’Acacia (The Acacia). This is a book about war. In twelve chapters, the book jumps backwards and forwards between World War I and World War II (with a chapter to set the scene before World War I and one set in the immediate aftermath of World … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba‘s Тунгалаг Тамир [The Clear Tamir]. This is the first Mongolian novel on my site. It tells the story of Mongolia from early in the twentieth century to the unsuccessful 1932 Lama Uprising. The story is told through the eyes of two brothers – Erdene and Tömör … Read more
The latest addition to my website is J M Coetzee‘s The Childhood of Jesus. This book is not about the childhood of Jesus, except, perhaps, very tangentially. What it is about is the arrival of the five-year old David and the forty-five year old Simón in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country, where new arrivals seem to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is François Mauriac‘s Le noeud de vipères (Vipers’ Tangle; later: The Knot of Vipers). It is considered one of Mauriac’s best novel, a judgement with which I wholeheartedly concur. It tells the story of a very successful lawyer, who hates his family (wife, children, their spouses and children) with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sarah A. Al Shafei‘s Yummah, the first Bahraini novel on the site. It is more of a memoir, a tribute to her grandmother who had nine children, a husband who deserted her when she was pregnant with the ninth and various other tragedies in her life, yet managed … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rupert Thomson‘s latest novel Secrecy. Unusually for Thomson, it is set in the past – seventeenth century Florence – and involves several real people, including the main character Gaetano Zummo, who made sculptures out of wax, particularly ones showing decomposing bodies. Zummo comes to work for Grand Duke … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chinghiz Gusseinov‘s Магомед, Мамед, Мамиш (Mahomet, Mahmed, Mamish), an Azerbaijani novel, the first one from that country on my website. While certainly not a great novel, it is is certainly very enjoyable, telling the story of a rumbunctious family in Baku who both stick closely together while not … Read more