Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman Do you believe in endless, unconditional love? The answer to this question is likely to shape one’s opinion of The Bad Girl. Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian Nobel Prize winner in literature. His most famous books include Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and the War of the End …
Continue reading The Bad Girl (Travesuras de la niña mala): Mario Vargas Llosa
Monks and murder in the Middle Ages—an irresistible formula! Maybe it's the mixing of piety and nefarious doings that makes it so attractive. And a reason why this is one of my favourite crime series. It is set in Cambridge in the 14th century, and the detective is Matthew Bartholomew, a young physician who teaches medicine at …
Continue reading The Matthew Bartholomew Chronicles: Susanna Gregory
Translated from French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin Marcel Proust had always struck me as the quintessential snob’s choice; pretentious, devoid of action and inundating readers with impenetrable vocab. All of these concerns proved spot-on as I laboured my way through endless sentences disturbed by commas almost at every other word, sometimes …
Continue reading In Search of Lost Time; Volume 1: The Way by Swanns (Books 1 & 2): Marcel Proust
Talking About Books 