The latest addition to my website is Gloria Guardia‘s Tiniebla blanca [White Darkness]. The unnamed narrator, like Guardia, is a Panamanian student at Vassar College. One evening, while in New York, she has forgotten her money and tracks down an uncle and aunt, Antonio and Carmen. They are very friendly but she soon discovers that … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rana Haddad:‘s The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor. This is the first novel by a Syrian woman who has spent her adult live in England. This novel tells the story of a Syrian woman, daughter of an English woman and a Syrian heart surgeon, Dunya Noor who, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Esther Kinsky‘s Am Fluss (River). This is a beautiful book, narrated by an unnamed narrator but clearly based on the author. She has temporarily moved to London – she has no clear reason why – specifically to the very unfashionable area of Hackney, through which flows the River … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ali Smith‘s Like. This is Ali Smith’s first novel and a very accomplished novel it is. It tells two related stories. Amy was destined for an academic career at Cambridge University. She had had lesbian relationships and, in particular, she was having an on-again off-again affair with Aisling … Read more
This provocative headline comes from an article by Irish writer, John Boyne. It is, of course, absolute nonsense. Women are not better writers than men. I can only assume The Guardian published it to be provocative and get more hits on their page (they are rather desperate at the moment). I would, of course, point … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maria Gabriela Llansol‘s Geografia de Rebeldes (Geography of Rebels trilogy). This is Llansol’s first work published in English. The first two books focus on Ana del Mercado y Peñalosa, a historical person and friend of St John of the Cross. Ana interacts with St John but also with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ece Temelkuran‘s Düğümlere Üfleyen Kadınlar (Women Who Blow on Knots). This is a superb feminist novel about four women – the unnamed Turkish narrator, a Tunisian dancer and hacker, an Egyptian academic and a somewhat mysterious older woman who is Amazigh – who start off in Tunisia in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Margarita Khemlin‘s Дознаватель (The Investigator). This is a complicated murder mystery, set in Chernihiv (Chernigov in this book), Khemlin’s home town, in the Ukraine in the early 1950s. The eponymous investigator, Police Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Tsupkoy, is not Jewish but the victim, Lilia Vorobeichik, stabbed, and most of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Liana Badr‘s رج عين المرآة (Eye of the Mirror). This novel is set in the Tal el-Zaatar refugee camp in the mid-1970s and recounts the events of Siege of Tel al-Zaatar, as seen through the eyes of one Palestinian family and, in particular, the eldest daughter, Aisha. Aisha … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Dana Todorović:‘s Tragična sudbina Morica Tota (The Tragic Fate of Moritz Toth). This is a clever tale of an unemployed punk rocker, the eponymous Moritz Toth, who finds salvation as the prompter for the lead tenor in Turandot. However, he also finds that at first one and then … Read more