Book news, reviews and recommendations
One of the very few silver linings to the coronavirus is a reported upsurge in book sales. We have booksellers, publishers, warehouse staff and posties to thank for getting hard copies to us, despite risks to themselves. You’re probably in the habit of browsing your local bookshop or maybe buying from online booksellers but small […]
Ten Small But Perfectly Formed Publishers Who Will Post Books to Your Home Read More »
That subtitle is a quote from the press release for Luke Brown’s smart, funny new novel and it’s what made me want to read it. I tend to find the A4 sheets that accompany review copies a wee bit over the top but I loved that phrase which turned out to fit Theft very well.
Theft by Luke Brown: ‘An exhilarating howl of a novel’ Read More »
Although I’ve yet to read Hanne Ørstavik’s The Blue Room reviews of it by bloggers whose opinions I trust were enough to convince me that Love was likely to be something special. This spare novella tells the story of Vibeke and her son, Jon, on the eve of his ninth birthday, each, unbeknownst to the
Love by Hanne Ørstavik (transl. Martin Aitken): In the deep midwinter Read More »
Fleur Jaeggy’s novella is part of And Other Stories’ response to Kamila Shamsie’s ‘provocation’ back in 2015, calling for a year in which only books written by women should be published. For me it’s not so much the gender ratio of authors published that’s the problem, more the level of serious coverage books by women
A couple of years ago I read and reviewed Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative. It’s his fourth novel but the first to be published in the UK. The Folly is his debut and entirely different from Double Negative. According to the book’s blurb, when it was published in Vladislavić’s native South Africa back in 1993 it
The Folly by Ivan Vladislavić: An apartheid allegory Read More »
Made up of only nine short chapters, Yuri Herrera’s novella weighs in at just over one hundred pages. You might be forgiven for thinking you could knock it off in a few hours and move onto the next pressing book on the list that only seems to get longer but that would be a mistake.
Reading fiction in translation offers us a glimpse into different worlds, cultures that we can never experience ourselves no matter how sophisticated modern travel has become. That’s exactly what Elvira Dones’s Sworn Virgin does, taking us to the mountains of Northern Albania where the clan system is deeply embedded, blood feuds confine families to their
Sworn Virgin by Elivira Dones (transl. Clarissa Botsford) Read More »
I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of And Other Stories until a copy of Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative dropped through my letterbox. They’re a not-for-profit organisation who publish books funded by subscriptions from the likes of you and me, readers keen to support new writing and happy to pay an annual subscription for
Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavić from And Other Stories: A new approach to publishing Read More »