The latest addition to my website is Ingeborg Drewitz‘s Gestern war heute [Yesterday Was Today]. The novel follows fifty-five years in the life of Gabriele, from her birth in 1923 to the birth of her granddaughter in 1978. Unlike her mother and previous generations of women in her family, Gabriele seeks far more independence but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Suzanne Brøgger‘s Jadekatten (Jade Cat). This is the family saga of the Løvin family, a Danish-Jewish highly dysfunctional family. The focus is on the three later generations, with the first two generations having to cope with World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Germans and the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Serre‘s Les Gouvernantes (The Governesses). This is very much a post-modern French fairy tale. The austere Austeur family engage three governesses, firstly to look after their four boys and secondly because M. Austeur wants a bit of chaos in his life, which he does not get from … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sigrid Undset‘s Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken (The Axe (Part 1) The Snake Pit (Part 2); later: Olav Audunssøn. 1. Vows). This a new translation of the classic 1925 novel by the Nobel Prize winner, set in the late thirteenth century. Olav Audunssøn is fostered to a family when … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yan Ge‘s 异兽志 (Strange Beasts of China). The novel is narrated by a woman novelist and is set in Yong’an. The narrator is a writer and she writes about the strange and imaginary beasts that live in the city. These beasts generally look like humans and share many … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zsuzsa Selyem‘s Moszkvában esik (It’s Raining in Moscow). This is a series of interrelated stories concerning the Beczásy family, who were driven out of Armenia and settled in what was then Hungary, but in the last century changed hands three times and is now in Romania. Aided by … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anne Serre‘s Voyage avec Vila-Matas [Journey with Vila-Matas]. This is quirky novel about a woman author, clearly based on Serre herself, attending a literary festival and ruminating/fantasising about Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas. She imagines he is there on her journey and at the festival and thinks about the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Katja Perat‘s Mazohistka (The Masochist). The novel is narrated by Nadezhda von Moser. She was found as a baby, abandoned, in a basket by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man whom Richard von Krafft-Ebing named masochism after. Sacher-Masoch brought her up but he was neither a good father or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sara Lidman‘s Regnspiran (The Rain Bird). The novel tells the story of a small Swedish farming community at the very end of the nineteenth century. Egnor, a former womaniser and drinker but now a very devout fifty-year old Christian is married to Hanna. They had been trying for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marilynne Robinson‘s Jack. This is the fourth book in Robinson’s Gilead series. Unlike the others, none of it takes place in Gilead, Iowa, but is mainly set in St Louis. It goes back in time and tells the story of Jack Boughton and Della Miles, the outcome of … Read more