James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice
Following on from a recent review of Albert Camus’ L’Étranger at Mookse, I was struck by something read in the comment – that Camus took his inspiration from an American…
John Fante: 1933 Was A Bad Year
As the opening to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina makes clear, unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, and in dealing only with its own families it leaves a wealth of…
Michel Faber: The Fire Gospel
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I have a hit or miss relationship with the Canongate Myths series. The contributions of Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Atwood failed to excite…
Chinua Achebe: Home And Exile
In 1958 Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, the novel that helped usher in a new wave of African literature. Until that point literature concerning African had been written by…
Raymond Queneau: Exercises In Style
One of the most famous works by the French writer, Raymond Queneau, is Exercises In Style (1947), a fiction with the slightest of plots. So slight, the whole story can…
Chris Cleave: The Other Hand
When the first edition of John Boyne’s The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas appeared, the blurb gave little away, noting, “Usually we give some clues about the book on the…
Dubravka Ugrešić: Nobody’s Home
Open Letter Books, based in the University of Rochester, have been blogging away at Three Percent for over a year now, and last month they finally launched their first title:…
Gilbert Adair: The Key Of The Tower
Regular readers of this site are no doubt sick of the mention of Gilbert Adair, given that he’s the most reviewed writer here and I’ve already reviewed the brilliant The…
Patrick Süskind: The Story Of Mr Sommer
Part of the joy in reading books for a second, third, umpteenth time is that you can come away with an improved understanding. One book I read a few years…
Ma Jian: Stick Out Your Tongue
With the recent Olympics in Beijing, and partly inspired by the way book stores used this event to cram their promotional shelves with Chinese fiction, I thought it would be…