I have been watching the best of 2013 lists with interest not least because, pedant as I am, 2013 only finished a few hours ago so it did not seem to comment till today. While it was unlikely a brilliant new book would be published in the last couple of weeks of the year, it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Helen Oyeyemi‘s Mr Fox. This is a modern updating on the Bluebeard legend. St John Fox is a 1930s US writer whose novels features unpleasant things done to women. Mary Foxe, who is entirely a figment of his imagination, berates him for his treatment of the women. Oyeyemi, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Minae Mizumura‘s 本格小説 新潮社 (A True Novel). This book has been very well received both in Japan and elsewhere and, perhaps not surprisingly, had appeared in other European languages before appearing in English earlier this year. It was worth the wait. It is a superb Japanese take on … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Michael Ondaatje‘s Anil’s Ghost. This is another superb novel by Ondaatje on war, truth and perspective, this time focussing on the conflict in Sri Lanka, the country of his birth. It tells the story of Anil Tessera, a forensic pathologist and Sri Lankan by birth but who has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Benjamin Markovits‘ Childish Loves, his third novel about Lord Byron. Unlike his previous two, this one mixes in (semi-)autobiographical details with Byron’s story, as we follow the story of an author/teacher called Benjamin Markovits, who receives the manuscripts of two novels about Byron, written by a former friend … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Steven Hall‘s The Raw Shark Texts. I found it a rather contrived novel that did not really work for me. It tells the story of a young Englishman, Eric Sanderson, who has had something of a breakdown – eleven times – since the accidental death in Greece of … Read more
We have just returned from a holiday in Laos and Cambodia, finally seeing Angkor Wat. I have two novels from Cambodia on my site and two from Laos and, though I was given another Cambodian novel in English, it seems unlikely that many more will be added. Though the Khmer Empire was undoubtedly very literate … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s Tunc. This is the first of a two-part series and tells of a young inventor, Felix Charlock, who invents something that seems like a spy bug but also involves storing data in a computer and analysing it, all with a slight science fiction touch. He is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juan Francisco Ferré‘s Karnaval, a superb novel about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair. Ferré takes the story of Strauss-Kahn and his alleged rape of an African chambermaid in a luxury New York hotel and makes a wonderful novel about a character called DK (the D standing for dios i.e. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Arnon Grunberg‘s Tirza, finally published in English this year. This is Grunberg’s masterpiece and a first-class piece of writing it is. It tells the story of Jörgen Hofmeester, a publisher’s editor, married and the father of two daughters, Ibi and Tirza. Jörgen drifts through life, as he drifted … Read more