If you follow my blog you’ll probably realise that I mostly read prize-winning books. That’s not because I think prize winners are the only books worth reading (sometimes I don’t even rate them all that highly). No, I read the prize winners because I get to read books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up – … More Heart Lamp Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq translated by Deepa Bashti
“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Age 6, I … More The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
In September, Hubby and I spent a fortnight back-packing in Europe to celebrate my early retirement. Our whistle-stop tour took in Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Saltzberg, Munich, Frankfurt and Cologne and provided many memorable moments, some planned (Oktoberfest – or Blackpool on acid as I now call it) and some unplanned (floods in Central Europe). And … More Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Michael Hofmann)
When I was a small child we lived next door to an old woman. Her name was Mrs Billington, and some nights she’d roam the street like a ghost, in slippers and a long, white nightgown, her white hair loose around her shoulders, looking for her mother. Mrs B gets ‘confused’, my mother told me. … More Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
translated by Daisy Rockwell The older I get and the more I travel, the more I realise how many people hate the English. Not individual English people, you understand, but The English, with a capital T capital E. I can see why. TE have done some good in places (ask the Maltese, ask the Greeks … More Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know I usually open each review with a story or an anecdote. This time I’m going to break with tradition and pitch straight in. The Chip-Chip Gatherers is set in Trinidad and centred on the Settlement, a collection of “mean huts and houses clinging despairingly to … More The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
I was nineteen when I first came across the story of Patient Griselda, within the Clerk’s Tale in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. For those who don’t know the story, Griselda’s husband sets out to test her obedience, first by removing their two children at birth, supposedly to have them killed, then by throwing her out … More Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (translated by Marilyn Booth)
Six years ago I visited the Bodies Revealed exhibition when it came to Liverpool. In case you haven’t heard of it, this is an exhibition of real human bodies that have been preserved using silicone rubber, a process known as plastination. The bodies are dissected and put in dynamic poses so you get the chance … More Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
When my brother became a vegetarian in his teens it caused a bit of a flap. This was the mid-1970s, we lived on a council estate in Liverpool, and the nearest we’d got to vegetarianism was eating fish on Fridays. So to find we were living with someone who’d stopped eating meat was like being … More The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
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