The latest addition to my website is Cecilie Løveid‘s Sug (Sea Swell). While this novel has a plot, it is decidedly modernistic, using poetic collages, fragments and images, rather than telling us the story in a conventional way. Our heroine is Kjersti Gilje and we see her imaginary, and semi-erotic relationship with her sea captain … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Cora Sandel‘s Alberte og Jakob (Alberta and Jacob). This is a semi-autobiographical novel, the first in a trilogy, set in a small town, based on Tromsø. Alberta is a young woman who has left school and now has nothing to look forward to but marriage and a family. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fiona Snyckers‘ Lacuna. J M Coetzee‘s Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace was controversial, particularly for the scene where Lucy Lurie is raped by three black men. The book was criticised for being racist, showing black men as violent, but also for sexism as Lucy is seen as passive, refusing … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karen Duve‘s Regenroman (Rain). Leon Ulbricht is an unsuccessful writer when his friend Harry Klaamt gets him the job of writing a biography of Harry’s boss, Benno Pfitzner, a former boxer and current pimp and thug. With the advance, Leon, with his docile but attractive wife Martina, buys … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Almudena Grandes‘ El corazón helado (The Frozen Heart). This is a long and complicated novel set mainly in the present but very much looking back to the Spanish Civil War. We follow the stories of two related families, one primarily Francoist and one primarily Republican, and their respective … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jana Bodnárová‘s Náhrdelník/Obojok (Necklace/Choker). This novel tells the stories of two Slovak women – Sara and Iboja – who meet in their hometown after Slovak independence in the late twentieth century. Their stories and the stories of their families are the stories of Slovakia as we follow them … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Najwa Bin Shatwan‘s (Catalogue of a Private Life). This is a collection of eight stories from Libya. Some are serious, but most are satirical, absurd and/or surrealistic, telling of the grim situation in Libya and the repression of the people, particularly the women. We have a cow that … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Manon Steffan Ros‘s Llyfr Glas Nebo (Blue Book of Nebo). This is a Welsh post-apocalyptic novel, translated from the Welsh. Following what looks like a nuclear war and the failure of a local nuclear power station, thirty-six years old Rowenna and her fourteen year old son, Dylan, living … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juli Zeh‘s Neujahr (New Year). Henning is on holiday in Lanzarote with his wife, Theresa, and young children. On New Year’s Day 2018 he decides to go cycling on his own up the steep slope to Mount Atalaya. During his ride he thinks of his life, which is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sigrid Undset‘s Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken 2 (The Snake Pit; later: Olav Audunssøn. 2. Providence). This is the second in her Olav Audunssøn tetralogy, following on from Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken (The Axe); later: (OlavAudunssøn. 1. Vows). In this book Olav and Ingunn finally get together and marry … Read more