The latest addition to my website isLydie Salvayre‘s La Vie commune (Everyday Life). This novel tells the story of Suzanne Barette,a widow of thirty-two years who works as a secretary in the office of M. Meyer, a successful marketing manager. A new secretary has been appointed and Suzanne really does not like her – cheap … Read more
The latest addition to my website isYōko Ogawa‘s 沈黙博物館 [Museum of Silence]. A Japanese museumologist is invited by a cantankerous elderly lady to set up a museum in the remote village where she and her adoptive daughter live. Only after a while does he learn what the museum is – a collection of items taken … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Noémi Kiss-Deáki‘s Mary and the Rabbit Dream. Noémi Kiss-Deáki is Finnish but writes in English. This book is set in early eighteenth-century England. It tells the story of the historical Mary Toft. After her fourth miscarriage, while her cervix was still open, enabling rabbit parts to be inserted … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Festival (Festival) and El juego de los mundos (Game of the Worlds), both published in one book called Festival Festival is about a film festival celebrating a Belgian film director who is hailed as an original artist though he seems only to have made B-list science … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Agnieszka Taborska‘s gnieszka Taborska: Niedokończone życie Phoebe Hicks (The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks). Taborska tells the story of the fictitious Phoebe Hicks, who, is made ill by eating clam fritters in mid-19th century Providence, RI, and turns to spiritualism. While we see the traditional features of spiritualism … Read more
The latest addition to my website isJaroslav Rudiš‘Winterbergs letzte Reise (Winterberg’s Last Journey). Winterberg is a 99 year old man originally from what was Sudetenland. At the end of the war, German speakers were expelled and he went to Berlin. He now, with the help of his carer, Jan Kraus, plans to travel round Central … Read more
The latest addition to my website is ‘s لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة (No Knives in the Kitchens of This City). The novel follows an extended Syrian family from the the middle of the last century to the early twentieth century. The mother, from a well-to-do family, falls for a man from a poor … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Phalènes [The Moths]. This is the third in his trilogy and we follow the same family we met in Les Cancrelats [The Cockroaches]but World War II has finished and things are changing, symbolised by the young women dancing in their Charleston dresses. Prosper is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Antonio Soler‘s El sueño del caimán (The Alligator’s Trap). Our unnamed hero is a Spaniard working as a receptionist in a hotel in Toronto. A customer – Luis Bielsa – arrives. Our hero recognises him but he does not recognise our hero. We gradually learn that our hero … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 方舟さくら丸 (The Ark Sakura). A man we know only as Mole lives in a huge underground abandoned quarry, preparing himself for the inevitable nuclear Armageddon. He is well stocked with food, weapons and other necessities but has not found anyone suitable to share his fate. At … Read more