The latest addition to my website is Marjana Gaponenko‘s Wer ist Martha? (Who is Martha?). Our hero is Luka Levadski. He is a ninety-six year old Ukrainian ornithologist. He has just been told he has only a short time to live so he cashes in his savings and heads off to the luxurious Imperial Hotel … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Susan Daitch‘s Siege of Comedians. This is a superb and highly complex novel with three main characters and lots of secondary ones. We follow Iridia, a forensic sculptor for the Brooklyn Missing Persons Bureau, who uncovers a people trafficking plot but has to flee to Vienna as the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Wolf Wondratschek:‘s Selbstbild mit russischem Klavier (Self-Portrait with Russian Piano). The unnamed Austrian narrator meets Suvorin, a retired Russian classical pianist in a café and they become friends, meeting regularly in a Italian restaurant. Much of the novel is Suvorin recounting his life, his views on various matters, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Canto Castrato. This is by far the longest novel by Aira I have read and by far the most disappointing. It is not an Aira-like novel but a fairly conventional historical novel set in Naples, Vienna, St Petersburg and Rome in the mid-eighteenth century. We follow … Read more