The latest addition to my website is Maki Kashimada‘s 六〇〇〇度の愛 (Love at Six Thousand Degrees). This is something of a Japanese response to the film Hiroshima mon amour, scripted by Marguerite Duras, about a French woman who has an affair in Hiroshima with a Japanese man whose relatives were killed by the atom bomb. In … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eugenia Kononenko‘s Російський сюжет (A Russian Story). This is the last in my Ukrainian marathon and, despite the title, certainly one that deals best with the issue of Ukrainianness (the word is used in the book). We follow the story of Eugene (Zhenia) Samarsky. He is named Eugene … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maria Matios‘s Солодка Даруся (Sweet Darusya). The novel is set among the Hutsul people in the Carpathians and is told in reverse chronological order, starting in the 1960s . Sweet Daryusa is so called because the locals consider her foolish and because she is mute. \We learn that … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Oksana Zabuzhko‘s Польові дослідження з українського сексу (Fieldwork In Ukrainian Sex). Zabuzhko opens this novel all guns blazing and rarely lets up. She has been in a relationship with a fellow Ukrainian but has now broken up with him and she has no hesitation in telling us why. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hiromi Ito‘s とげ抜き 新巣鴨地蔵縁起 (The Thorn Puller). She calls it a long poem but we might describe it as an autobiographical novel. On the one hand, she describes the difficult role that society that society imposes on women as a daughter and only child of ageing and ill … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nino Haratischwili‘s Mein sanfter Zwilling (My Soul Twin). Stella’s parents divorced when she she was six and she and her sister went to live with her father’s Aunt Tulia, as their mother had gone to the USA with her boyfriend. They were joined by Ivo, son of their … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marvel Moreno‘s En diciembre llegaban las brisas (December Breeze). Marvel Moreno tells a series of interlinked stories, many of which show the cruelty of men towards women. Colombia is clearly a very patriarchal society and many of the women in this book suffer under it, with the men … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sevgi Soysal‘s Şafak (Dawn). The story, partially based on the author’s own life is set in Adana, where Oya is in internal exile after a spell in prison. The period is during the Turkish military giovernment in 1971, when martial law has been imposed. She is invited to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vigdis Hjorth‘s Er mor død?(Is Mother Dead?). Johanna, now sixty, is a Norwegian artist, living in Utah. Her husband, Mark, has died and her only child, John has moved to Copenhagen so she decides that it is time to return to Norway. However she is estranged from her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zhang Yueran‘s 九栋 (Cocoon). The book is narrated by Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong. They had not met for eighteen years, when they were eleven and close friends.They tell their stories in alternating chapters. Li Jiaqi had returned to look after her dying grandfather, a former heart surgeon. … Read more