László Krasznahorkai: Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó (A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East)

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The latest addition to my website is László Krasznahorkai‘s Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról utak, Keletről folyó (A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East). This tells the story of the grandson of Prince Genji who seems to live in the present day, in … Read more

Alisa Ganieva: Offended Sensibilities

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The latest addition to my website is Alisa Ganieva‘s Offended Sensibilities. Unlike her previous books, set in Dagestan, this is set in a provincial Russian city, which is totally corrupt, presumably a microcosm of Russia as a whole. Nikolai gives a lift to a clearly disturbed man but when he is stuck in a pothole, … Read more

Cormac McCarthy: The Passenger

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The latest addition to my website is Cormac McCarthy‘s The Passenger. Published when he was eighty-nine, it is clear that McCarthy can still write a first-class novel. Our hero is Bobby Western. Two things initially cause him misery – the suicide of his twin sister, whom he was in love with and the fact that … Read more

Zhang Yueran: 九栋 (Cocoon)

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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

Vasily Grossman: Народ бессмертен (The People Immortal; No Beautiful Nights)

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The latest addition to my website is Vasily Grossman‘s Народ бессмертен (The People Immortal; No Beautiful Nights) . The book had been translated into English in 1945 but this version uses the original manuscript, some of which was censored, often by Grossman himself. It is an account of the relatively early period of the Nazi … Read more