Month: June 2025

June So hot The month on winstonsdad

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  1. Wildcat Dome by Yuko Tsushima
  2. Migrations by Milos Crnjanski 
  3. The city and the world by Gregor Hens 
  4. Berlin Andris Kupriss
  5. The little I knew by Chiara Valerio 
  6. Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf                                                                    
  7. Attilia by Javier Serena 
  8. The river by Laura Vinogradova 
  9. Just a little dinner by Cecile Tlili

I reviewed nine books on the blog last month. I would have done more, but over the previous few days, I have been too hot to sit and write well. But this month I started in Jpaana with a story connecting the nuclear disaster of recent years with the falling of the bombs at the end of the war. Then the tale of two brothers and the wife and lover that connects them is a classic of Serbian Literature. Then a journey through what =cities mean and how they grow and are in a way, a living thing. Then tales in Berlin from a Latavian point of view. Mr Dalloway to tie in with it coming out 100 years ago. Then the story of a Spanish writer in Paris writing a book with the same title as this book about him writing that book. Then a woman discovers that her father wasn’t the man she thought he was after inheriting his country home, as she writes to her long-lost sister. Then we finished on a warm evening in Paris, rather like the weather we are having at the moment, and two couples each have their own reason for being there. After this night, nothing will be the same !!

Book of the month

 

I chose these two books because they both remind me of the early Peirene books, can be read in a single sitting, and feel much more than they appear to be. Just a little dinner captures two couples, each person at the dinner table with something on their mind and something to tell and figure out. Then the river sees a woman hurt after the loss of her sister many years ago, rediscovering a father she never knew as a different man than her mother had told her.

 

Non book events

Well, I started two new TV series this month and watched all the episodes of another. First, the comedy we binge-watch is The Power of Parker, a comedy set in Stockport written by Sian Gibson, who worked with Peter Kay on Car Share. The humour is very northern. And it is a little surreal in place but a great early 90s soundtrack and lots of references to that time made Amanda and me watch it in a few weeks. Then there is Countdown, a series on Prime following a team brought together to find out who killed a cop, and the series seems to stumble onto more than just the drugs angle to the death. Then, Smoke on Apple TV, which I have been looking forward to, follows two arson investigators as they solve a series of arson cases involving arsonists on the rampage. It boasts Apple’s usual high production value and is slow-paced so far. Then, music-wise, I got the latest Half Man Half Biscuit album, which has an excellent track record. Store Day is a tongue-in-cheek pop song about the record store day and how much things cost. I also picked up the new Pulp Lp. But my main buy was the fantastic collection of lost Springsteen albums, the Lost Albums tracks 2 collection. I’ve loved the La Garage LP so far, which falls between Nebraska, my favourite Springsteen album, and Born in the USA. Also, some great Western-style tracks for a film that never saw the light of day. The seven albums demonstrate his exceptional talent; this is the material he had previously withheld. It is as good as anything he released at the time.

Month ahead

Well, I’m thinking I’m on holiday, so I plan to read more non-translated books than translated books this month. I have a British crime novel that I picked up a few weeks ago, which I thought I would like, set in the North of England in a large house. Later this week, we also get the Wainwright prize for the Nature writing longlist. A prize that I have read several books from the longlist over the last few years. So, I will do the same again when that comes out, as I love nature writing. Other than that, I have a few books I have brought with summer reading in mind. What are your plans for July?

 

 

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Just a little dinner by Cecile Tlili

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Just a little dinner by CécileTlili

French fiction

Orignal title – Un simple Dîner

Translator – Katherine Gregor

Source – Subscription copy

If you haven’t been following the blog for a while, you may not know that I am a keen fan of the new publisher, Foundry editions that have been bringing us a great selection of books from around the med and they all have a blue cover design with a motif in the design linked to the place the book is set this time it is Paris. This was the writer’s Debut novel and was shortlisted for the Goncourt Prize in the section for Debut novels. There was a review of this book in The Times, which is great to see a small publisher getting coverage in a significant newspaper rather than the same few books that every paper, reviewer, and so on, has to discuss. But the reviewer mentions a connection between friends for them and this book. Well, for me, the mention of a dinner party brings back one memory, and that is the closed room drama that is Abigail’s party. Well, this isn’t quite as brutal as that, but as the reflection of Britain in the seventies, one could say this dinner party and its guests reflect the Paris of their day.

Johar walks in the twilight. She asked her driver to drop her off a few blocks away from Étienne’s building. She needs some air before getting cooped up for the evening. She walks slowly, in no rush to arrive at this dinner party she wasn’t expecting and is already finding annoying. She takes her time to inhale the heavy scent of this summer evening.

The avenues here are wide. There are windows with striped awnings swaying gently in the breeze. The rustling of the trees accompanies her footsteps and their canopy forms a protective arch above her head.

Here she is already on Boulevard Raspail, outside Étienne’s building. She sits on a bench and takes a deep breath. A few swathes of grey have appeared in the sky.

Gusts of wind toy with the dry leaves, warm blasts of air hitting her in the face. A thunderstorm is badly needed to break this late-August mugginess at last and wash away the day’s sweat and weariness.

As Johar heads to the dinner this sticky evening how will it end !

The dinner brings together two couples: Claudia, the hostess of the party, a timid young woman who is very nervous about the evening, and her partner. She is a physiotherapist. She has settled into a way of life, the way it is and isn’t ambitious. Her husband, Etienne, has invited Johar, a woman in the business world, driven and fast-rising, who is soon to be the big boss of the company where he works. In turn, Johar has brought her husband, Remi. But as they gather around the table, the course of the evening will see the two women reevaluate their lives as they all have secrets about what the evening is all about, with Johar turning a blind eye to her home life in a way. Is Claudia pregnant? How will the evening end? The tension is there as we see how each person has a reason for the evening being there or not wanting to be their, daydreaming about another woman.

Étienne won’t stop talking about pottery. Johar was hoping that her interest in the pomegranates would create a diver-sion, but he has gleefully grabbed this opportunity to describe his tastes, his travels, and his encounters. As usual, Étienne talks about himself. He briefly goes into the dining room, but before Johar can enjoy a minute of peace, he returns, carrying a vase with a delicate blue pattern.

“Here, look. Hold it. Does it remind you of anything?”

“No. I don’t know. Did it use to be on this mantelpiece?”

“No, no – I mean the pattern. Surely you recognise it?” Johar mechanically runs her fingers over the vase, following the geometrical outline of the turquoise stars. Étienne can’t contain himself any longer. “Nabeul. It’s pottery from Nabeul.”

Think we’ve all had a situation where we get drawn into talking about something else !!

This is a book about how we sometimes fail to express ourselves enough until it is too late, and how modern relationships have evolved. As I mentioned, this is a portrayal of 21st-century Paris and urban life through the lives of these four characters. Just as Abigail’s party captured the spirit of the seventies dinner party, it also explores how men and women interacted in the seventies. Each time I read a dinner party from the formal affairs in Waugh’s books to the post-war dinner parties of writers like Updike and Bellow in the US of those boom years. Through Abigail’s PART Y AND THINGS LIKE friends to a 21st century Paris, and four people with different agendas for the evening, and what is going to happen. This is a tight work that builds well into the evening, reflecting each character’s actions, feelings, and motivations, as well as what they are trying to achieve or hide. Ultimately, it is Etienne who brings the two couples together. It captures this generation’s view of dinner parties and how they interact, as well as their lives. Do you have a favourite book with a dinner party?

 

The river by Laura Vinogradova

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The river by Laura Vinogradova

Latvian fiction

Original title – Upe

Translator – Kaija Staumanis

Source – Personal copy

I passed 16 years of blogging yesterday, and this book is the perfect example of all I had in mind for this blog. Translated book, from a small press, from a female writer from a country with very few books translated into English. This book is the second in a triptych of books that Open Letter has just released from Latavia. In some way, this is the sort of book I love and have always championed, those sorts of tales that touch me as a reader. Laura Vinogradova is someone who started off with a business degree before discovering her passion for writing a few years ago. She then published a couple of children’s books before this, which was her first book for Adults. It was nominated for the European Literature Prize and shortlisted for the Latvian Book of the Year.

Rute sits on a small stool in front of the stove, her head resting between her knees and her hands submerged in a bowl of warm water. She’s washing dishes, slowly and clumsily. She’s used to having a dishwasher, and the plates slip out of her hands, the forks prick her fingers. She sets the clean dishes on the floor next to the stool. Then she picks up the bowl of water, now full of coffee grounds and bits of food, to dump it outside behind the house. She opens the door carefully, the full bowl in her hands, and stops, startled: a young woman is in the yard, a little boy stands at her side and another child kicking in her stomach. Rute doesn’t see this, but can sense it. The woman’s coat is fastened only over her breasts, her stomach stronger than the buttons, splitting the coat in two.

Rute arrives athr fathers little house in the countryside !

Anyway, the book follows the stories of two sisters, or is it the story of Rute, the sister who is left behind? Her sister, Dina, disappeared many years ago, and is only present in the book through the frequent letters written by Rute to her sister, which litter the book. In the book, we meet Rute, a woman who seems to be at a crossroads in her life as she points out she is now maybe the older sister, as she is now much older than her sister was when they were last together. She is in a relationship, but she has also discovered that her father, a man she never really knew, has passed away. She heads to the property he owns in a small village. This is where she meets the couple next door and their young son. But it is also where the reality of who her father is, a man her mother said was a waste of space, comes alive in the eyes of the couple, an odd couple of single mother and brother next door, and the man she thought she knew is not the man he is. Add to this her escape from the city and perhaps her own problems. This is what happens when you step outside your own typical life, look at someone else’s life, a past you never had, and wonder where you move forward. All this, along with the small house that later develops its own problems, prompts Rute to reassess her own life and future.

Dear sis!

I planted the dahlias. For you. I dug up the ground with a dull shovel and tore out the weeds. Matilde was right the soil here is all clay. But I planted the bulbs and did some thinking. Ten years. Do you still remember me? Or think of me? Are you planting dahlias for me, somewhere?

Life seems to happen on its own. I would’ve never guessed that I’d one day be planting dahlias at our dad’s house. Never. But life happens. In all kinds of ways.

Sis, I want to tell you about the river. About me in the river. It makes me tremble and shiver. It makes me laugh.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt this alive. The water is fairly clear by the dock. Deep. I can’t touch the bottom, I’d have to go under a bit. You can cross it in no time. If you want get a good swim in you have to kind of circle around. You can feel the current. If you let it, it’ll carry you, though I don’t know how far.

Sis! I want to stay in the river.

I wish you’d come back …

Love you.

One Rute’s letter toher sister long disappeared but she still writes to her !

Now this is what I call a small epic, a novella that feels like an epic work. It packs a lot into a small book. Loss of a sister, moving forward with a relationship, our parents, and our own vision. In our lives, all these are looked at in this very short novel. As I said, this is the type of novel I love: personal, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and a gem that needs to be widely read. It reminded me of those early Peirene books from well over 15 years ago, books that can be read in the time it would take to watch a film, and in this case, will leave you with a lot more than most modern films do. This tugs at what makes us human as readers. Do you have a favourite novella that feels epic ?

 

Oh to be sweet sixteen , winstonsdad turns 16 today

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Another year has passed, and they fly past so quickly these days. I find it hard to believe that it only seems like yesterday. I was inspired by the folks I had met on Twitter and started this blog. Now, 16 years later, with 2460 posts, nearly 1500 reviews, and well, twenty short of that total. The book bloggers who inspired me have long since passed away. The blogs I first followed, barring one or two, have since gone. But for me, if anything, the desire to blog is more now than it has ever been.I wish I had more comments, but I am not great at commenting and replying. I will admit that it is something I struggle with, but I am thankful for those who do comment and wish I were better at commenting back. But I am me anyway. Over the last year, I have gone on to my own website as I was running out of space and moving forward. I will be putting affiliate links for the books I review when I set this up. Adding some Ko-Fi or such, just by doing it on my own website via WordPress and now trying to get all my SEO stuff sorted, costs me a little money. I just want to recoup the cost over the year. The blog has lots of reviews, ok, they aren’t the best, but they aren’t the worst. I have reviewed books from many countries and hope to eventually reach the complete global count of countries. But I am also looking to add books to countries I have already read. So here’s to the next 16 years, reaching 1,500 reviews, then 2,000, and so on. I am basically saying this blog isn’t going anywhere everI felt like a fraud for years, not clever enough, not well-read enough, not popular. But actually these days I couldn’t give a shit is there any other bogs with sommany reviews from so many countries around well. Not many. I feature many small presses, championing them, most of which I support by actually buying their books. I have been part of the shadow jury for the Booker and the IFFP for a long time, which I started. I started the Translation Thurs hashtag. I feel I have done quite a lot over the years. I am so proud of my blog and what it has brought me. I am well read and will always feel unread, but shouldn’t we all !!! There is so many great writers out there in translation and still waiting to be translated!! The scenery has changed in those 16 years. When I started, there were fewer books we are in a golden age of books in translation. Let’s bask in the glow of it all and let’s make sure we keep getting more. Thanks to everyone who has read a post, commented, invited me to a place, sent me a book, and helped me on the first 16 years of carrying this journey into the next 16 years!

Attila by Javier Serena

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Attila by Javier Serena

Spanish ifction

Original title – Atila. Un eseritor indescifrable

Translator Katie Whittemore

Source – personal copy

I also recently ordered these, as I want to support Open Letter, which had lost some grant funds, by purchasing a few books from them that had caught my eye over the last few months. Open letter brought out two books with the same title, Attila. This is the one written by Javier Serena, a Spanish writer, whose other book examined the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. In this book, he features his fellow Spanish writer Alioscha Coll, who is the author of another book titled Attila, which he  wrote . He died shortly after this book was published, and it is now considered a masterpiece. Serena himself has spent time in Paris, which is where the book is set and where Alioscha Coll spent most of his adult life as a writer in Paris after he had left his studies as a doctor. What is captured is the time he spent writing his book and himself as a person.

This seemed to be his only aim: to finish the book as soon as possible, working around the clock, refusing to feel sorry for himself over Camille’s jilting, taking refuge in his idiosyncratic endeavor to string together words and thereby not confront the absolute isolation in which he was immersed. He clearly avoided the subject of his reclusion as we looked for the exit from the park, for as we climbed stairs and left ponds and leaf-strewn dirt paths behind us, Alioscha wanted only to talk about his recent reading and certain technical aspects of his book, making no mention of the despair I knew the young university student must have caused him. Nor did he confide in me when, having left the bounds of the park, we ran out of literary topics to discuss. As we moved farther from where I had found him, I remained uncertain whether Camille’s departure was a temporary, mutual decision, or if she had unilaterally resolved never to sleep in my friend’s company again.

Regardless of what Alioscha did or did not tell me, he certainly showed obvious signs of having gone too long with no one to talk to: it was partly the nervous way he had of speaking, his expressions more clipped and abundant than usual, along with the worsening of his physical appearance, evidenced by long greasy hair and obvious pallor.

He has a on/ off relatonship with his girlfriend

The book is divided into three parts, all of which revolve around the writing of his historical novel Attila. The book is told from the point of view of a friend of Coll, a fellow writer who talks about a hit man who may be caught out of time. From him not reading any modern novel. We see him later on diving into a bin of discarded books, hoping to find a lost gem of a book. He is described as a man who could sit and read a three-hundred-page novel in a single sitting, coming from a relatively well-off family with a number of his relatives having fame as well. This is a writer on the edge like a modern day figure from a Somerst Muagham novel, living in a one of those numerous small parish flats writers and arritst inhabit when trying to be famous and struggling to get by that was Coll he was a volatile man that had an up and down relationship with his girlfriend. But also struggles to be a writer in the modern age. He is drawn to history, and this current book he is writing, which is other book that Open Letter has published in this pair of books

This seemed to be his only aim: to finish the book as soon as possible, working around the clock, refusing to feel sony for himself over Camille’s jilting, taking refuge in his idiosyncratic endeavor to string together words and thereby not confront the absolute isolation in which he was immersed. He clearly avoided the subject of his reclusion as we looked for the exit from the park, for as we climbed stairs and left ponds and leaf-strewn dirt paths behind us, Alioscha wanted only to talk about his recent reading and certain technical aspects of his book, making no mention of the despair I knew the young university student must have caused him. Nor did he confide in me when, having left the bounds of the park, we ran out of literary topics to discuss. As we moved farther from where I had found him, I remained uncertain whether Camille’s departure was a temporary, mutual decision, or if she had unilaterally resolved never to sleep in my friend’s company again.

Regardless of what Alioscha did or did not tell me, he certainly showed obvious signs of having gone too long with no one to talk to: it was partly the nervous way he had of speaking, his expressions more clipped and abundant than usual,

As a character he capture Alioscha well .

 

I loved this. I picked this way around to read this fictional account of the writer. I’m not sure how much is the writer himself and how much is what Serena has imagined. But the bones of the story are the actual fact that he was writing this novel at the time the book was written, and he had struggled with his mental health. I do wonder how much is his and how much is Serena’s own experience as being a lone writer in Paris. However, the book captures a writer on the edge trying to be distinctive, as evident when he states in the book that he avoids modern writers of his age. This is a view of a soul trying to get his final book on paper, a book he knows is essential, but as he does this, his whole world is falling apart, and other things are happening./ An interesting mix of books to publish the book of the writer and the book from the said writer is an interesting idea. I will review the other Attila novel at a later date. Have you read either book?

 

 

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

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Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

English classic

Source – Personal copy

I had seen earlier this year that it was the centenary of Mrs Dalloway’s publication. I had toyed with reading it, and when I saw the vintage classic edition, which features the original cover art and is styled after the original Hogarth edition of the book, it appealed to me. So the other evening I decided to order it as I knew it was set in this month, and having tried to find the exact day in mid-June, the book is set, it has various dates come up on Google, and this is sort of in the middle of them. I had read this in my late teens, but that is over thirty years ago, and I wondered how it would resonate with me as a reader now. The book, like Joyce’s Ulysses, follows a single day in the life of the main character, such as Clarissa Dalloway.

Edgar J. Watkiss, with his roll of lead piping round his arm, said audibly, humorously of course: ‘The Proime Minister’s kyar?’

Septimus Warren Smith, who found himself unable to pass, heard him.

Septimus Warren Smith, aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too. The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?

Septimus as man scared by the war

I THINK SINCE I read this book for the first time, I have spent time around the part of London where we meet Clarissa. She is a woman in her fifties, and she is wandering around London at the start of the book as she is gathering flowers for her party. Alongside this sis a side tale of Septimus, a man injured in the First World War, who spends his day in the park with his wife. There is a juxtaposition between the two and about how the war affected them both a broken man with his Italian wife, he spends the day as we see them both spending time. Also, Clarissa remembers back to her youth and times spent in Bourton on the Water, the picturesque Cotswold village that is nowadays packed with folks, but I would have loved to have been there back in the day when it was a tranquil village like Clarissa describes and remembers her youth and her meeting her husband and their friends. The day moves on, and it is the evening, and the party is taking place, when the two stories sort of meet as Clarissa finds out something about Septimus that makes her think about herself and her life.

Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly-why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.

I loved that there iwas seedy characters around back then in the background of her walk as she is near St Pauls

This book is a book I loved more this time, the flow of her prose I connect with, I think vaguely, knowing London a little better than I did many years ago although I am due a trip to London soon. Also, the scenes in the Cotswolds as this is very near where my dad lives, and we often go when visiting him, around the Cotswold villages near him. At the heart of the book is the ghost of the First World War, but how people dealt with it the two main characters on the surface seem poles apart but actually, is Clarrissa just daage in a way but not showing it it captures class and not showing emotions as well The book unfolds over the day it is like Joyce in fact in last weeks Guardian there was a call for there maybe to start being a Dalloway day like Blooms day in Dublin for London. I love to walk around London I knew a few of the places well, others I wasn’t too familiar with. I’m pleased I revisited it after all this time; it shows how life can change a writer I had always found hard to connect with as a teenager. When I read a few of her novels. Have you read this recently, or are you planning to, given the centenary?

The little I knew by Chiara Valerio

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The Little I Knew by Chiara Valerio

Italian fiction

Original title Chi Dice E chi Tace

Translator – Alisa Wood

Source – subscription book

I have banged on a lot about how much I had enjoyed the books from last year from Foundry editions, which have published several of my favourite books from last year. I must admit this is the first from their books this year that I have read. I was grabbed by Chiara Valerio’s bio as she is an editor, writer and a lit blogger, many years ago, and she has published a lot of books. it sis always great when you find a new writer with many books already out for you to read. This book was on the shortlist for the Premio Strega prize and was inspired in part by. The writer is reading one of Georges Simenon’s novels, his Roman Durs, which inspired her.

And so Vittoria was the first woman to own a boat space at the dock, an exclusively male club. Every year the film Around the World in 80 Days would be on TV, with David Niven as Phileas Fogg, the man who has bet all his money and has to complete a trip around the world and return, by a specific day and time, to London, to the Reform Club, an exclusive men-only club where he is a member. And he manages it, but he brings a woman with him, the Indian princess he has fallen in love with. After Vittoria bought the boat, the dock started to seem like the Reform Club with neon lights, and Vittoria’s face had a hint of something Indian and, at heart, regal.

She was a strong female figure in the town with her boat etc!

As I said, this was inspired by Simenon; it is a mystery in a way he did his mystery in his roman durs, more about the flaws in the human condition and places. So this is more an insight into the small seaside town of Scauri. Those living there there interactions with her, but also the relationships and thoughts of her. Then we need to know how this dead woman ended up in the town all those years ago!  The seaside town is set in the middle between Rome and Naples, at the remote end of the seaside towns of the area. So when Vittoria, the local chemist, herbalist and all-around woman that everyone knows in this small town, is found dead, drowned in her bath. Lea, the local lawyer, sets about finding out about this woman. She had been in the village for nearly thirty years, but was one of those women everyone turned to. She listened as others poured their hearts out to her. She lived in a villa with Maras, making her herbal recipes, helping people make amazing recoveries from various illnesses over the years. How could a woman who swam every day and was an expert with her boat drown in a bath? Who was this woman? Will Lea learn more after chatting to all the locals about her? Why does she want to know more about her?

Vittoria might have become one of those healers you find in little towns who apparently have no skill or purpose but live alongside nature, and not just humans. Despite everyone always asking her all sorts of things, and her real intuition for diagnosis, she had never wanted to be one. She seemed to live a quiet life, staying in the pharmacy for the hours she had to, then spending the rest of her time walking, swimming, reading botanical books, and tending the garden. She liked having people around the house and playing cards. I’m interested in both earthly and heavenly plants, she would say, laughing.

But she was much more than that to this town!

This is one of those books that feels like a crime novel but without a detective. It is about small towns and how unsettling a death out of the blue can be, and how someone can fit into a town without anyone ever really knowing who she was! WEho was Vittoria whart had brought her from Rome all those years earlier it focus on those little bonds and tyies that weave together a small town but also how at the heart there could be a black hole of a person that seems to be at the heart of it all but is actually more invisible to those around her for the fact she only listen to those and on the surface was the woman everyone. She was known for her job and her ability to heal people, but what was her past? I get how this was inspired by Simenon; he was great with the ambiguity of human nature, those grey characters in life never black or white. This is about small town relationships and passions, and also that never quite trusting the incomer, even thirty years later! Do you have a favourite novel that is a crime novel, but isn’t, if that makes sense like this?

Berlin by Andris Kuprišs

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Berlin by Andre Kuprišs

Latvian fiction

Original title – Berlin

Translator – Ian Gwin

Source – Personal copy

I brought this trio of books from. Open letter books just after I read about the withdrawal of the funding for so many great publishers in Translation. I had some other books preordered from different publishers. However, I had been keeping an eye on this collection before the announcement. I had this down if I was going by one of the three books that Open Letter calls a translator’s choice for a country. It reminds me of the Peter Owen series of books, which they released several years ago, featuring three books from each country per year. I think someone could run with this as a long-term project to build a collection of world literature, with the opportunity to acquire a selection of books from each country. I noticed after reading the collection that Andris Kuprišs holds a master’s degree in photography. I can tell the very short stories are like a wonderfully framed photo, a glimpse at a life, a moment.

He put his hand on her stomach, sliding it lower. With his fingers he found her hip bones and felt them. He brushed her left leg, his fingers sliding down to her shin, then back up, his fingertips resting just above her knees.

“You were away when it happened. He was already drunk when he got here, the door was unlocked that night. At first I wanted to tell him to leave, but he insisted he had something important to tell me. He asked me to pour him a drink, so I let him have the last of the whiskey from my birthday. We satin the kitchen until I finally said something, that it was time for him to get going, but he just sat there, listening and slowly drinking. I said he had to hurry up because you were coming home soon, and he said I had nothing to worry about because he knew that night you weren’t.”

He had stopped caressing her and was sweating again.

A woman recounts something thagt happened in the story The Rape

The collection now comprises 19 short stories and a novella titled Berlin. I will leave Berlin to you, a reader, to say that it captures the expat experience in that city. If you are from the Baltic states, the rest of the collection is also set there. So, the rest of the book is composed of a collection of short stories and what may be flash fiction. A couple are in bed as the woman tells the man about what had happened whilst he was away. A friend, drunk at the time, came into the flat when she invited him in, she tells her partner. Then she says she couldn’t get away after she had let him in. This is a theme that runs in some of the stories, unease another sees a young boy fearful of answering a ringing phone. The short pieces are like little gems. How do we view someone in two ways? Why are his hands cold?

The first way in which the following situation differs from an-other, similar situation, is that I met him—a person I respect and regard quite highly—here, where I figured I would never have met him at all.

The second way, no less important to this situation, but perhaps far more important than the first, is that just as I went to shake his hand and ask him what he was doing here, he took me by the hair and forced me down. I fell to my knees, my face nearly touching the ground, him angrily saying almost shouting-“Learn humility!”

From the story two way in. which the following situation differs

Again a play with duality of life here in this flash fiction piece

There is a pervasive sense of sorrow and melancholy throughout this collection. It is a series of stories about the darker side or the underside of life. Being maybe an outsider in a town, and how that affects you moving forward. I also said this is like a collection of black-and-white photos. I wonder if that was his medium in photography, where the world is very black and white, with shadows and a feeling of gloom over the world we visit. He also plays with two characters interacting at the heart of some of the stories, which is that interplay and the way power and mood can shift between them. Whether it is a teacher and student, parents and their children, lovers in bed, or a man awakens in a bed and the man next to him thinks he is Jesus (I remembered the NYRB book about The Three Jesuses of Ypsilanti). Do you have a favourite book from the Baltic states?

 

The City and The World by Gregor Hens

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The City and the World by Gregor Hens

German non-fiction

Original title – Die Stadt und der Erdkreis

Translator Jen Calleja

Source – Personal Copy

One of the first prose works from Fitzcarraldo, I fell in love with an earlier work by Gregor Hens, Nicotine. I had not long stopped smoking when the book came out ten years ago. Gregor had also been stopped a couple of years, and yes, ten years later, I am still stopped smoking, so when I saw this was coming out, I knew I would love it. Apart from that, he has also translated Will Self’s recent books into German. The book is one of those that is hard to pigeonhole. Still, the main thread of the book is our relationship with the city now, and also how we navigate the modern cityscape, in a way, revealing the similarities between many cities.

In January 1976, a year and a few months after Pere’s experiment, Peter Handke made his own observations in Paris; he carried out a far more spiritual kind of walk-ing, standing, sitting. His gaze is not that of a stationary camera mounted on the tripod of a café table, but that of the angel Damiel, who in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire is trying to get closer to people, the city dwellers, and not least the patrons of the reading room in which I am writing these lines, than his nature allows.

Handke sees the passers-by in the square ‘in a flickering winter atmosphere, notices a woman’s fake fur flying in the wind and notes: They are living before the catastrophe.’ Which one? What catastrophe has Paris been spared so far? What catastrophe are we (my mother, my brother, and I) facing? Handke was right, he had to be right, because we are all always living on the verge of catastrophe. One or another.

The mention of Wim Wenders and his film

Now, the book is a rambling look at his view of the city he has visited, but also about those writers, thinkers, and architects who have shaped those cities, both in the way they are laid out and within our minds. He takes us from Latin America and Buenos Aires and its connection to post war Nazi activities and then through China. Even flying cities and that writer on cities. Here, of course, he mentions Self, a great fan of psychogeography and people like Guy Debord, who, of course, coined the term and his map of the little islands of Paris. I loved the other parts, a mention of Berlin and Wim Wenders filming his masterpiece, The Wings of Desire ( I am such a fan of this film, I have watched it tens of times ). Another vague connection is a tale around the lead singer of Einsturzende Neubauten, Blixa Bargeld, which made me smile as I had recently just bought a couple of the band’s CDs. Another writer he mentions is Alexander Kluge, and his book Air Raid, which recounts the destruction of the small city where he grew up during World War II. I have reviewed this book.

Alexander Kluge recognizes that the air raid ordered by Harris on his hometown of Halberstadt in April 1945 is a hyperobject, an elusive, temporally and spatially diffuse entity. The dimensionality of the situation can only be represented in a literary montage that links the strategy from above with the strategy from below. In his book on the events, Kluge uses everything from eyewitness reports and interviews with pilots to maps and graphics, everything that could shed a light on the complex system of space and time, because the bombing does not begin with the air raid siren, with the development of weapons, nor does it end with residents scratching around for the remains of their relatives and friends in cellars that have become ovens in the firestorm because of the adjoining coal stores. If it ever ended at all, it was probably with Kluge’s final report written in 1970, which can, however, only ever be a temporary one.

I ;liked this last line of this piece about Kluge’s Air raid

It is fair to say I would love this book, it fits nicely next to the likes of Kluge, Sebald and Ester Kinsky, all of which are mentioned in the book at some point. It is one of those drifting books, a one-person quest to answer how we came to the cities we have. Also, if you’re a fan of Psychogeography and films like Robinson in space/ It is a book that I will return to over time it has so many little vignettes and titbits of information it needs to be read and read over time it is a book that will leave you wanting to look at a big city differently next time you visit. A perfect example of what the white Fitzcarraldo books are is thought pieces that make you, as a reader, think and question. A shadowplay of what a city is, as Ian Curtis said in his song Shadowplay, “to the centre of the city, where all roads are waiting for you ” they will be after you have read this book !!!

Migrations Miloš Crnjanski

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Migrations by Miloš Crnjanski ( although it is spelt on my cover Tsernianski)

Serbian fiction

Original title – Seobe

Translator – Michael Henry-Heim

Source – Personal copy

One of my goals for this year was to read more classics and Modern classics from around the world, what with the Booker International it has drifted off, but I will try to feature more books like this that are out of print but are essential in their countries’ Canon, like this book by the Serbian Modernist writer. Miloš Crnjanski was considered one of the leading exponents of Expressionism in his writing. His early books, like this, Dealt with Serbia and its Historic past. This book follows two brothers through the years and struggles as one of them fights for a brigade in the Austro-Hungarian army. However, as they do, they start to dream.

A crowd had gathered near the stables and the sty to await his arrival, but even more to await the coach and horses and servants of his brother, Arandjel Isakovic, a merchant known throughout the Danube and Tisza basin for his wealth.

According to their agreement, his brother was to spend the night in the village with the children and rise early to be with him when he took leave of his wife, whose violent ways both men feared. And indeed, just as he reached the top of the hill, his brother’s large brightly painted coach came into view and was immediately surrounded by servants.

By this time the rain had ceased, the sky had cleared.

Entering the hut, the man bumped his head on the thatched roof. He found his wife freshly washed, dressed in silk, beautiful. Tired from the strenuous ride, he looked at her in a new light. He went to her and started kissing her through

As Vuk heads out to the war

This book is set in the 1740s, but in a way has a feel for the time, a decade or so after World War I, when it was written it sees the birth of the Austro Hungarian Empire and the first parts of the Ottoman falling a[art as we see tw brother Vuk he is the brother in the Army as an Officers his brother Arandjel who has followed his brother well more his wife and his daughters this brother is a successful merchant and provides a lot for his brother and his wife Dafina. The brothers both have a connection to her, one as husband, the other as his mistress, bewitched by her beauty. The book is set during the war, but it isn’t so much about the great battles as it is about being in the camps, being bored as a wife, and following her husband from battle to battle. It also explores the idea of a greater Serbia among the troops as they fight in France. As the three of them face who they are, where they are from, and what lies ahead for them all after these twisted connections between them, Alos, it is about love and loss and about honour and family.

This was the house in which Vuk Isakovic had chosen to lodge his wife and two girls, who arrived in a coach loaded down with clothes, furs, carpets, pearl brooches, silver buttons, and the like, and accompanied by a crowd of loudly lamenting women and aging servants.

Though younger than his brother, Arandjel Isakovic treated Vuk as if he were the younger. Whenever he stood next to him, he gave him pitying looks; whenever he sat next to him, he made sure Vuk had the more comfortable seat, though he himself was thin as a rail and his brother round as a barrel; and whenever his brother spoke to him, he smiled, avoided his glance, and paused before responding.

His brother provides for them but also has his wife as his mistress !

As I said, the themes of this book revolve around the culture and identity of the various states in the Balkans. In this particular case, it is Serbia, and in the book, it drifts between the two great empires of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, which is just starting a few years after this book is set, as the vacuum between those two led to the dream of a great Serbia. However, the book also has echoes of the post-World War I era, which is the time in which the book was written, in the late twenties, and even extends to the recent Balkan war in the 1990s. Add to that the other thread of the relationship between the brothers and the wife, and how that triangle acts out. The book also explores the feeling of never being in the right place, as well as the question of Migration, which remains a highly newsworthy topic today. Still, it isn’t a Serbian; it is someone from sub-Saharan Africa or the war-torn Middle East, on the lookout for a new place and a dream of a different world. I liked this book; it is one of those books whose themes have a timeless quality, focusing on family, love, and passion. Of  Nationhood and place, of migration and belonging, all these questions are still there, nearly a hundred years after this book was written! Have you read this book?

Wildcat Dome by Yuko Tsushima

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Wildcat Dome by Yuko Tsushima

Japanese fiction

Original title – ヤマネコ・ドーム

Translator – Lisa Hofmann -Kuroda

Source – review copy

I have meant to review another book by this writer, who is the daughter of Dazai Osamu and uses a pen name for her books. Her half sister is also a writer and a number of her other family members have been ninvolved in Japanese goverment this book came out later in her writing Career but also linked to the present of the Fukushima Nuclear disaster and also events in the war are all interlinking into this story one that sopans the decades and also crosses reality at times. I must admit that this is a book that lingers with you as a reader, but also requires a closer reading than I did. But i will giver you my take on the book.

Kazu’s thoughts drift back to Yonko, whom he is seeing for the first time in a long while. Though when he thinks about it, he realizes it’s only been about two years. But how long ago that seems now. The truth that Mitch and Hide had stumbled across was so frightening that Yonko and Kazu stopped talking, unable to look at each other or even talk on the phone. They tried to forget, since there was nothing they could do, no matter how much they wished otherwise. For two years, they tried to convince themselves:

I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten. All this time, enveloped in an unnatural silence. As they continued to avoid talking to each other, they hoped their connection might fade on its own. Though perhaps what they really wanted was to escape their own past.

Kazu imagines Yonko running through the city, livid.

She remebers her firend Kazu and later we find out what happened in the past

As I said, this is a book more about modern and post-war Japan than about the characters in the book and the loneliness between reality and dream, like a world that exists. At the heart of the story are two characters, Mitch and Yonko, meeting years after they were both in an orphanage. Alongside another boy called Kazu, the two boys were inseparable as kids. Something happened, and what the book does is link the past of post-war Japan and these feral children, kids of GIs and Japanese women. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the book presents the two characters facing past events in their present. What Yuko does as well is incorporate a lot of colour themes that recur in the book Orange, which in Japanese is Daidai, meaning the tree and generations. I’m not sure if this is what she meant in the book. It is one of those books, wonderfully written about a long-past tragedy, told through the eyes of a friend. Also, time spent in a dome in their youth, where they saw many things that may have been dream-like events, when they were told about there being a drowning of water and Japan vanishing.

Mitch has gone completely silent now, and there is nothing Yonko can do but hang her head and ponder what that “really bad” thing could be. The sandy mud is on her sleeves now. Her red coat grows heavier by the minute. As soon as they get to the station, she is sure her mother will yell at her for not being more careful. And then Yonko won’t be able to ask her anything at all. What were you all talking about last night, Mom, did something sad happen, she wishes she could ask. But children can’t just go around asking questions of adults— especially questions that might cross the boundaries of the innocent world that adults have constructed for them. Adults are always on guard against children, keeping them far away from their secrets.

Mitch has his own past

As I said, this is one of those books that is more about themes than characters, focusing on loss, loneliness, Japan’s distant past, and its post-war years. About growing up and always being an outsider. Having a secret. But also about the thin line between a child’s dream world and reality, and what that means now and then to those involved. As I said, this book may benefit from being familiar with her body of work a little more. This is the third book by her that I will have read. But perhaps also a little more knowledge than I have of post-war Japan and how being half-Japanese and American would have affected those born in those heady post-war years. There is the spectre of Nuclear war and also Nuclear disaster, as this was written in the aftermath and effects of the Fukushima disaster. Colour also plays a part in her writing. I was reminded of the Trois Couleurs films and the way they used colours to reflect a theme, and I think this has a similar thread running through the film. Have you read this book? What is your take on it?