A necessarily brief review (I’m posting this from a sandy beach in Cyprus) of a dark but inventive short story collection set on 15th August 1945 – the day Japan surrendered and the Second World War formerly ended.
Translated Literature
BOOK REVIEW: Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine
A glimpse into a complex situation through the eyes of a naive young woman who discovers a country, makes friends, falls in love and is confronted with the plight of the Palestinians.
BOOK REVIEW: An Untouched House
A short but shocking Dutch war classic by a writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut.
BOOK REVIEW: The Beekeeper of Sinjar
Dunya Mikhail tells the harrowing but often moving stories of women who have managed to escape the clutches of ISIS.
THOUGHTS ON: The Little Prince
A moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language.
THOUGHTS ON: Around the World in Eighty Days
One ill-fated evening at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions £20,000 that he can travel around the world in 80 days – and he is determined not to lose!
‘A Pocket Guide: The Literature of Wales’ by Dafydd Johnston
In this, the third of my occasional features about Wales to be posted in the run-up to Dewithon 2019, we look at an informative little book about Welsh literature.
BOOK REVIEW: In Search of Lost Books: The Forgotten Stories of Eight Mythical Volumes
The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances.
BOOK REVIEW: The End of Loneliness
Told through the ruptured lives of three siblings, The End of Loneliness is a heartfelt, enriching novel about loss and loneliness, family and love.
BOOK REVIEW: Estoril: A War Novel
Estoril is a comedy-cum-spy story set in a luxurious hotel during the height of the Second World War.
THOUGHTS ON: Ru
At 162 pages, Ru is a short but intense potpourri of vignettes – powerful, superbly realized and well worth reading.
BOOK REVIEW: A Maigret Christmas
A Maigret Christmas is the title story from a newly translated book of short stories in which the burly detective receives an unexpected visit from two ladies on Christmas morning.
BOOK REVIEW: Love
Love is an intelligent, compassionate, if melancholy tale, which demonstrates what can happen if we become too internalised and fail to be mindful of those we love most.
THOUGHTS ON: The Vegetarian
The Vegetarian is concerned with obsession, desire, fear, disintegration of family and madness.
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words: The Authorised Biography #ToveTrove
Tove Jansson, author of the Moomins and one of the great idiosyncratic talents of the 20th century, must surely have found her ideal biographer in Boel Westin.