Adam Nevill: Banquet for the Damned
Banquet for the Damned (2004) is what happens when you take the Scottish town of St Andrews and lay over it Casting the Runes by MR James. Though there are…
B.S. Johnson: Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry
With good writers it can take some time for us to become their contemporaries.” writes John Lanchester in his introduction to Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry (1973). This is certainly…
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is the one of those books that, on coming into 2022, I felt I ought to have read by now. It’s another title, like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four…
Joaquim Ruyra: Jacobé / Finita
Jacobé and Fineta by Catalan writer Joaquim Ruyra (tr. Alan Yates, and published by Fum d’Estampa, 2022) are two short stories from early in the twentieth century, originally gathered in…
Graeme Macrae Burnett: His Bloody Project
His Bloody Project (2015) is a classic found document story, ostensibly presented as a collection of documents relating to a historical triple murder in a remote part of Scotland in…
Nicola Barker: I Am Sovereign
I Am Sovereign (2019) is typical Barker, where typical means quirky characters, pop culture references, typographical fun, and a playful narrative. Admittedly it’s a style that took a couple of…
James Kelman: What I Do
Kelman is a meticulous chronicler of working class Glaswegian men, raising them from the gutter to give them literary representation. His work draws on the output from both European existentialists…
Antonio Tabucchi: Requiem: A Hallucination
Requiem: A Hallucination (1991, tr: Margaret Julia Costa, 1994) is the only book Tabucchi (1943-2012) wrote in Portuguese rather than his native Italian. In a way it’s something of sad…
Bel Olid: Wilder Winds
Wilder Winds (2018, tr: Laura McLaughlin, 2022) is a slim volume packing sixteen short stories that whizz by on the page but linger on the mind. Set in various locations…
Georgi Gospodinov: Natural Novel
Natural Novel (1999, tr: Zornitsa Hristova, 2005) is the story of one man’s handling of his divorce after his wife announces she’s pregnant with his friend’s child. The way he…