The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s Nunquam, the second-part of a two part series, started with Tunc. This one starts off where Tunc ended and finds Felix Charlock in a sanatorium, with a head wound. When he recovers, the mysterious Julian, with whom he has talked many times but never actually meets, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Richard Powers‘ Orfeo. This one follows Powers’ usual themes of technology, music and politics, telling the story of Peter Els, musician and scientist. At the start of the novel, Els is seventy and living alone. He is experimenting with gene splicing. We later learn that he is, in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Arnon Grunberg‘s Onze oom [Our Uncle]. This is a long and quite complicated novel, set in an unnamed Latin American country where there is a war on terror going on. Major Anthony, known only by his first name and with an English name because of his father’s anglophilia, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marie Darrieussecq‘s Le Mal de mer (UK: Breathing Underwater; US: Undercurrents). This is something of a strange book, with virtually no direct conversation in it and not a great deal of plot. It tells of an unnamed mother who walks out on her husband, taking their unnamed daughter … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gustaf Hellström‘s Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé (Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea). This is Hellström’s only book translated into English and a very enjoyable book it is. It is a family saga of the Lekholm family, starting with Pehr Lekholm, a lacemaker who fought in the First Schleswig … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marie Darrieussecq‘s White (White). This covers Darrieussecq’s favourite theme of isolation, helped by the fact that it is set in Antarctica, hence the title. It tells the story of a scientific expedition based in Antarctica, focusing on two people, Peter Tomson, a heating engineer, and Esmée Blanco, a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hans Henny Jahnn‘s Die Niederschrift des Gustav Anias Horn nachdem er 49 Jahre alt geworden war [The Notebook of Gustav Anias Horn after he was 49 years old]. After Jahnn wrote Das Holzschiff (The Ship), he planned to write a tenth chapter. This book – 1600 pages long … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chinghiz Aitmatov‘s Джамиля (Jamila; Jamilia). This is Aitmatov’s first published work and in reality not much more than a longish story. It is set in World War II when most of the adult men are away from the village, leaving the older men, the boys, the women and … Read more
I have now read at least one book by all twenty of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists so I feel I should now make a few comments. A couple of caveats. Firstly, with four exceptions, I have only read one work by each of them. Many of them have only written one novel but some … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kamila Shamsie‘s Burnt Shadows. This is a story about allegiances (and lack thereof) and identity. All of the main characters struggle with who they are. The main character is Hiroko, a Japanese woman whose father is deemed to be a traitor, who is engaged to a German and … Read more