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…
Micheline Aharonian Marcom: The Mirror In The Well
There’s something about the blurb for Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s new novel, The Mirror In The Well (2008), that just makes it all the more tempting. How could anyone not want…
Gilbert Adair: The Death Of The Author
While I’ve read a number of Gilbert Adair’s recent books, the older titles from his back catalogue are out of print. One of these titles, The Death Of The Author…
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt: Oscar And The Lady In Pink
There’s no mention made anywhere on Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Oscar And The Lady In Pink (2002) that it’s the third title of a loose series called Le Cycle de l’Invisible, four…
Linda Grant: The Clothes On Their Backs
Linda Grant comes to this year’s Booker longlist following on from her longlisting for this year’s Orange Prize, an accolade she won in 2000 with her second novel, When I…