Alain Elkann: Envy
Alain Elkann has, in the last thirty years, published over twenty books spanning essays, biography, and fiction. Envy (2006) is the first, as far as I’m aware, of his works…
James Meek: We Are Now Beginning Our Descent
When it comes to writing a novel, there are two approaches: doing it for the art and doing it for the money. In James Meek’s novel, We Are Now Beginning…
Martin Amis: Night Train
Love him or hate him for his outspoken views on this, that, and the other, you can’t deny that Martin Amis has a way with words. And I say this…
Ismail Kadare: Agamemnon’s Daughter
When it comes to reputations, Ismail Kadare’s is one that certainly precedes him. Having come from nowhere (well, I hadn’t heard of him, at least) to scoop the inaugural MAN…
Kurt Vonnegut: A Man Without A Country
It’s a mistake to subtitle Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country (2005) with “a memoir of life in George W. Bush’s America” since a) it’s not much of a…
Hjalmar Söderberg: Doctor Glas
“Life, I do not understand you”, writes Doctor Tyko Gabriel Glas in his diary as events draw to a close in Hjalmar Söderberg’s classic eponymous novel, Doctor Glas (1905), and…
Clarice Lispector: The Hour Of The Star
Following on from a recent post by dovegreyreader, I spotted a copy of Clarice Lispector’s The Hour Of The Star (1977) in Waterstones, knew I recognised the name from somewhere,…
Hitomi Kanehara: Snakes & Earrings
It’s a little early to be calling, as the cover boldly declares, Snakes & Earrings (2004) by Hitomi Kanehara a “cult classic”, but within its pages there’s enough to warrant…
Bi Feiyu: The Moon Opera
In a world where the arts would appear to be in terminal decline, or at least in a depression, it’s somewhat reassuring – though devastating – to discover that it’s…
Andrey Kurkov: A Matter Of Death And Life
There is nothing original in the idea of what a person would do if they learned the scope of their finite lives. Invariably they make lists of things they haven’t…