Translated from French by Helen StevensonPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2015, 280 pages. Original version published in 2014. Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, when he was 22, and didn’t go back for 23 years, not even when his mother died. Refusing to accept her death, he keeps up the myth that she is alive and …
Continue reading The Lights of Pointe-Noire: Alain Mabanckou
Published by Jonathan Cape / Vintage, 2015, 304 pages. “This is the story of a jinnia, a great princess of the jinn…who loved a mortal man long ago, in the twelfth century…and of her many descendants.” This is Salman Rushdie as Scheherazade, narrating events that take place over 1,001 nights. Jinns are creatures of smoke …
Continue reading Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: Salman Rushdie
Published by Harper & Collins / Faber & Faber, 2012, 448 pages. Dellarobia Turnbow is heading up to the cabin owned by her family to meet a lover, trying to break out of the suffocating life she lives. But she never gets there. An amazing sight on an overlook on the other side of the …
Published by Viking / Penguin, 2018, 432 pages. The result of the referendum on Brexit in 2016 sent shockwaves through not only the UK, but Europe and beyond. Looking back now, the "why" is a little clearer—the anger, the fact that many voted emotionally, and the complacency of the ruling elite. In Middle England, Jonathan …
Published by Hutchinson / Arrow, 2016, 400 pages. Electing the successor to St. Peter—a man who will be the leader of the Catholic Church, the head of the Vatican and one of the most powerful spiritual leaders in the world—is carried out in strict secrecy. This secrecy and the political intrigues that go on behind …
Translated from Serbian into French by Jean Descat, and into English by Lovett Fielding EdwardsPublished by Éditions L'Age d'Homme, 1975, 84 pages. English version published by Longship Press, 1980, 83 pages. Original version published in 1974. Although this book exists in English (as The Mouth Full of Earth), it is out of print. But I …
Continue reading La bouche pleine de terre: Branimir Šćepanović
Published by Pan / Mulholland Books / Mantle, 2018, 880 pages. I wasn’t going to write this, since I’ve already reviewed a book in the Shardlake series (Dark Fire). But Tombland is a little different—it is not just a murder mystery but also describes a little-known event in English history. The series centres around Matthew …
Published by Penguin Random House, 2017, 560 pages. A mysterious substance called Dust; the alethiometer, an instrument that can reveal the truth; and daemons, animal-shaped manifestations of people’s inner selves: we are in familiar territory, the world of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. Almost 20 years after the last book in the trilogy was …
Continue reading The Book of Dust, Book 1: La Belle Sauvage—Philip Pullman
Translated from Turkish by Ekin OklapPublished by Faber & Faber, 2017, 272 pages. Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel is about obsession, guilt and the destructive relations between fathers and sons. The novel is narrated by Cem, looking back on himself as a 16-year-old boy. His father, a pharmacist and a communist, is often absent—he is either …
Translated from Norwegian by Diane OatleyPublished by Scrivener UK / Simon & Schuster, 2017, 352 pages. Original version published in 2015. We are in the midst of the sixth extinction and are losing species at an alarming rate. But we seem to have trouble recognizing the scale of the loss. How many of us associate …
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