Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alcemi, Chris Keil, Liminal, St Brygga, Welsh writers on March 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Liminal (2007)
Chris Keil
Alcemi, 194pp
“You’d be walking down the street, and on your right you’d see an archway that you’d somehow never noticed before, and you’d turn through it, without thinking… and there would be no way back… and nothing would ever be the same again.”
That is Geraint speaking, the central character in Welsh [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Aue, Charlotte Mandell, David Mamet, Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes, The Kindly Ones, Unreliable Narrators, Woody Allen, Zelig on March 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) (2006)
Jonathan Littell
Chatto & Windus, 975pp
Translated by Charlotte Mandell
No recent novel has, I am certain, caused as much controversy as Jonathan Littell’s second novel, Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the story of Maximillian Aue, an SS Officer during the Second World War and the question of complicity. It is a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Az Ajtó, Baumgarten Prize, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Len Rix, Magda Szabó, Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, The Door on March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Az Ajtó (The Door) (1987)
Magda Szabó
Vintage Books, 262pp
Translated by Len Rix
Magda Szabó was widely regarded as Hungary’s foremost female writer, and following her death in 2007, her reputation has only increased. She was known as a novelist, dramas, essays, and poetry, though she came to the first three of those after the era of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged atlanta, contemporary african american fiction, makes me wanna holler, martin luther king jr, nathan mccall, them, toni morrison on March 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Them (2007)
Nathan McCall
Pocket Books, 339pp
Nathan McCall, once-famous as a reporter for the Washington Post, and subsequently for his autobiography Makes Me Wanna Holler (1994), detailing the determination of this young African American to escape his neighbourhood and the life his peers fell into, of crime and injustice, and though he spent three years incarcerated, [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 2666, amulet, Amuleto, Benno von Archimboldi, Los Detectives Salvajes, Natasha Wimmer, roberto bolano, savage detectives, south american fiction on March 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
2666 (2004)
Roberto Bolaño
Picador, 898pp
Translation by Natasha Wimmer
Santa Teresa, in the state of Sonora, on the Mexican-U.S. border, becomes a figurative hell in Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous novel, 2666, published a year after his death in Spain and translated into English by Natasha Wimmer (who also translated his Los Detectives Salvajes (1998)) and published in 2009. [...]
