The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 燃えつきた地図 (The Ruined Map). On the face if it this is the story of a detective looking for a missing person. Our unnamed detective is working for a woman whose husband – a reliable, conventional man, who had just received a promotion at work – disappeared … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fausta Cialente‘s Ballata Levantina (The Levantines). This novel tells the story of well-to-do European expatriates (primarily but certainly not exclusively Italian) living in Egypt (primarily Alexandria) from the 1920s to the end of World War II. Our heroine is Daniela. Her grandmother, Francesca, had been a successful dancer … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ismail Kadare‘s Darka e gabuar (The Fall of the Stone City). This novel is set in the Kadare’s home town of Gjirokastër. The main background is the various occupations endured by the city (and its neighbouring villages) during Kadare’s lifetime. We start with the Italians who invaded it … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gervasio Posadas‘ El mentalista de Hitler The Clairvoyant. This is the story of the very real Erik Jan Hanussen. He was an Austrian Jew but pretended to be the son of Danish aristocrats. He had had some success as a clairvoyant/hypnotist but his fame increased when he predicted … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chris McCabe‘s Dedalus. McCabe is a modern poet but he has written a novel which is a homage to James Joyce, a sequel to Joyce’s Ulysses and a fascinating work in its own right. This post is being written on 16 June, Bloomsday, the day on which (in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eric Lane‘s Dante Alighieri’s Publishing Company. This book is a witty and colourful account of how Eric Lane, publisher of Dedalus Books, founded and ran Dedalus Books with the help of a few friends and his wife. He had been attending a novel-writing evening class and considered what … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mia Couto‘s O Bebedor de horizonte (The Drinker of Horizons). This is the final book in his Sands of the Emperor trilogy about Portugal’s colonial war in Mozambique in the nineteenth century. In this book, the Portuguese under Captain Joaquim Augusto Mouzinho de Albuquerque have defeated the Gaza … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Concrete Impressions. This is a wickedly funny post-modern satire, bashing non-post-modern novelists, politicians, the upwardly mobile rich, Zionists, the media, the United States and the Establishment. It tells of Mick Owen, the greatest writer of his generation. He is clearly an amalgam of the likes of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mia Couto‘s A Espada e a Azagaia (The Sword and the Spear). This the second book in his Sands of the Emperor trilogy about Portugal’s colonial war in Mozambique in the nineteenth century. It follows on from the first one and continues the story of Sergeant de Melo, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Oksana Lutsyshyna‘s Іван і Феба (Ivan and Phoebe). This novel primarily tells the story of Ivan but, to a lesser degree, of Phoebe, who will become Ivan’s wife during the course of the book. We follow Ivan from the early days of the break-up of the Soviet Union … Read more