Ryu Murakami: Piercing
Ryu Murakami is an author I’ve been aware of for a while now, partly because of his literary namesake, Haruki Murakami, and also through noting a positive response to his…
Jennifer Clement: The Poison That Fascinates
Woman, divine woman, you have the poison that fascinates in your eyes, goes the song by Augustin Lara from which Jennifer Clement takes the title to her second novel, The…
Rosa Liksom: Dark Paradise
When I think of Finland, the impressions I get are twofold. The first, as should be obvious, is of a country covered with lakes and forests touching upon the Arctic…
Adalbert Stifter: Rock Crystal
With Christmas in mind I fancied reading something festive to try and get me out of the humbug spirit and, while the obvious choice would have been Dickens’ A Christmas…
Raymond Radiguet: The Devil In The Flesh
It sometimes seems that there’s a precocious streak running through French literature with authors garnering literary respect at young ages. Françoise Sagan springs to mind, publishing Bonjour Tristesse in 1954…
Gilbert Adair: A Mysterious Affair Of Style
It’s not often that I read books by the same author one after the other but I enjoyed Gilbert Adair’s The Act Of Roger Murgatroyd so much that the only…
Gilbert Adair: The Act Of Roger Murgatroyd
Having fallen into a reading slump recently, which is somewhat criminal of me, I decided to look for something light, fun, and potentially enjoyable. So, who better an author to…
Quim Monzó: The Enormity Of The Tragedy
There’s probably a lot of jokes than can be made about an author named Quim translated by someone called Bush and, with that in mind, I’ll try and give them…
Noel Virtue: The Redemption Of Elsdon Bird
When a novel centres around child who has a hard life, I can’t help thinking that it’s a fictional take on the author’s own upbringing. I could find scant information…
Italo Calvino: The Castle Of Crossed Destinies
It has been a couple of years since I first read Italo Calvino, picking up his wonderful if on a winter’s night a traveler on a whim and being captivated…