The latest addition to my website is Marcel Melthérorong‘s Tôghàn. This the first Vanuatan novel ever published and the first on this website. It is very much an autobiographical novel. Tôghàn was born on New Caledonia to Vanuatan parents. We first meet him when he has been arrested (for burglary), not his first trouble with … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill‘s Los pichiciegos (Malvinas Requiem)The novel focuses on a group of Argentinian deserters during the Falklands War in 1982. They have managed to hide away underground but are worried about both their own side and the British. They are ruled with a rod of iron by … Read more
The latest addition to my website isHenrik Pontoppidan‘s Lykke-Per (Lucky Per). This is a long and complex story of a Danish man called Per Sidenius. He is born and grows up in a large very religious family but soon breaks with them. He does not, like his brothers, want to be a parson but a … Read more
The latest addition to my website isLydie Salvayre‘s La Vie commune (Everyday Life). This novel tells the story of Suzanne Barette,a widow of thirty-two years who works as a secretary in the office of M. Meyer, a successful marketing manager. A new secretary has been appointed and Suzanne really does not like her – cheap … Read more
The latest addition to my website isYōko Ogawa‘s 沈黙博物館 [Museum of Silence]. A Japanese museumologist is invited by a cantankerous elderly lady to set up a museum in the remote village where she and her adoptive daughter live. Only after a while does he learn what the museum is – a collection of items taken … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Noémi Kiss-Deáki‘s Mary and the Rabbit Dream. Noémi Kiss-Deáki is Finnish but writes in English. This book is set in early eighteenth-century England. It tells the story of the historical Mary Toft. After her fourth miscarriage, while her cervix was still open, enabling rabbit parts to be inserted … Read more
The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Festival (Festival) and El juego de los mundos (Game of the Worlds), both published in one book called Festival Festival is about a film festival celebrating a Belgian film director who is hailed as an original artist though he seems only to have made B-list science … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Agnieszka Taborska‘s gnieszka Taborska: Niedokończone życie Phoebe Hicks (The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks). Taborska tells the story of the fictitious Phoebe Hicks, who, is made ill by eating clam fritters in mid-19th century Providence, RI, and turns to spiritualism. While we see the traditional features of spiritualism … Read more
The latest addition to my website isJaroslav Rudiš‘Winterbergs letzte Reise (Winterberg’s Last Journey). Winterberg is a 99 year old man originally from what was Sudetenland. At the end of the war, German speakers were expelled and he went to Berlin. He now, with the help of his carer, Jan Kraus, plans to travel round Central … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Négar Djavadi’s Désorientale (Disoriental. The novel is narrated by Kimiâ, an Iranian bisexual living in Paris and, when we first meet her, trying medically assisted reproduction. She tells us about that but, in between, the fill and complex story of her extended family, who were in opposition both … Read more