There are some writers who make me think of the way painters work more than anything […]
Bardo or Not Bardo, by Antoine Volodine
Antoine Volodine’s Bardo or Not Bardo (translated by J.T. Mahany) is another book for the “what the […]
This House is Mine, by Dörte Hansen
Generally speaking, home is the place where we belong. Our family are there. Our memories […]
The Chosen Ones, by Steven Sem-Sandberg
Steven Sem-Sandberg’s The Chosen Ones (translated by Anna Paterson) is a difficult book to read. First, there […]
At Twilight They Return, by Zyranna Zateli
Zyranna Zateli’s meandering collection of tales, At Twilight They Return (translated by David Connolly), reminds me […]
The Midwife, by Katja Kettu
Finnish Lapland is a brutal place. It’s above the Arctic Circle. It’s remote. Until the […]
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, by Yu Hua
Set between the late 1940s and early 1970s, Yu Hua’s Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (translated […]
Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky
I had previously thought that John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces had the saddest publication […]
The Twelve Chairs, by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov
Almost ten years after the Russian Revolution, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobryaninov has put his past as […]
Götz and Meyer, by David Albahari
Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, David Albahari’s Götz and Meyer is a long stream of conscious […]