Category: #translationthurs

Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro

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Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentine Fiction

Original title- Catedrales

Translator – Frances Riddle

Source – Subscription book

I start this year’s Women in Translation Month with a writer who, over the last couple of decades I’ve been around blogging and talking about books, shows how a writer’s whole view in the reading public’s eye can change. Piñeiro is a writer I first came across when I was on the Bitter Lemon Press small-crime-in-translation list.  Whether it was Bitter Lemon being seen as a crime publisher.  They do mostly Detective fiction in translation.  Bitter Lemon Press released Piñeiro in 2009, and a few years later I bought All Yours by her.  So when Elena Knows earned a long listing and a shortlist for the International Booker, I said at the time that Charco Press had repositioned her as a writer more toward psychological fiction. For me, See is up there with the great psychological writers like Patrica  Highsmith.  For me, in particular, the Roman Durs of Georges Simenon come to mind.

I asked Ángela to show me the books he’d ordered.

She told me that only one of them was here; she’d sold the other one after so many days had gone by. She showed me the one we still had: The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

‘Do you remember what the other one was?’

‘Yeah, of course, Cathedral, by Carver, she replied.

Hearing that title made my stomach lurch, just like it had that afternoon when a customer came in smelling exactly like my father, If the boy shows up here again, let me know, please, 1 practically begged her.

‘Is there something I should know?’ Ángela asked,

startled.

‘Nothing important. He’s the son of someone I know

and they can’t find him.’

‘Alright, don’t worry, I’ll let you know, Lía?

Just as Mateo gets to her shop the mention of the Carver story

The book Cathedrals now resembles one of those puzzles you must assemble to see the full picture. It follows the fallout of a death in a family. The book comprises six chapters and an Epilogue. It traces the events in a family after someone kills and dismembers AnaSardá at seventeen.  The author reveals why this vicious killing occurred and what caused it. The book opens in Barcelona, with Ana’s sister Lia, who had to escape what happened and left her home in Argentina and escaped to Barcelona and is running a book shop in the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela only keeping touch via the occasional but the past catches up with theer when her other sister appears in her bookshop and is searching for her soon that had gone missing on a tour of Europe Cathedrals and they think Lia knows what has happened to Mateo their son.  He has grown up in a family broken by the violent death of his aunt.  He was pushed into the trip by his grandfather to see the cathedrals of Europe.  A statue struck Marcella, and the memory of Ana’s death haunts her.  Thus, the book continues with three more tales from people connected to the death.  Each tale drops a little crumb more.

Thirty years ago, the body of my aunt Ana, the youngest of the three Sardá sisters, was found burned and cut into pieces in a dump. Ana was only seventeen. Lía, nineteen.My mother, twenty-three; the same age I am now.

Lía looked to be agile and hard working. Seeing her climb up and down the steep ladder to get the book a customer had asked for, suggesting other titles, laughing in the middle of her conversation, I saw that some of her gestures were identical to my grandfather’s, and that was encouraging. When I got back to the hostel, I inspected my face in the bathroom mirror. I was looking for some similarity to Lía. I looked again at the photo of her on the internet. Maybe the hair colour, maybe the almond eyes. Even though mine are blue, like Ana’s. Any time someone says it, I get the mental image of her eyes in a head that was cut off from the body it belonged to.My mother’s eyes are blue, but different, colder, more transparent. But everyone has always told me I was the spitting image of my father. It would be a relief to find some proof that I’m not, or, at least, that I’m not only that.

Mateo talking about his mother and dead Aunt

I mentioned at the start of this post that I felt Piñerio is more than a crime writer.  I mentioned Georges Simenon as a writer I felt she was like.  Piñerio has mentioned him in interviews as a writer she liked, especially his Roman Durs.  This book also, at its heart, is a question around the Catholic religion and how it can make people into monsters, as the book slowly shows how Argentina viewed women within society and their roles within families. The book also references the short story of Raymond Carver of the same title. I read this as well, and I can see why it is mentioned: a blind man gets a sighted man to draw a cathedral for him.  The sighted man then goes a little over the top as they both see this cathedral drawn.  But it is the sense of blind faith and how we see things and how we view the world in a way that both stories share.  The ghost of a dead girl: how each sister had taken her own path after that death; one ran away and hated god. The other was drawn into religion even more. A story that lasts if you like tales that slowly burn, slowly unwind, that have how we view Morality, the church and family; this could have easily been set in de Valera Ireland. Have you read this or any other books by her? I have a few others to read !

 

Happy Blogannivesary 17 years of Winstonsdad

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It seems to come around quicker every year as I pass another year of blogging, and it has been 17 years since the first blog post. In that time, as of today, 21st June, on the blog there is –

2587 posts over the last 17 years means 152 posts a year, or a post every 2.5 days, over the last 17 years

I have written 1,521,156 words over the last 17 years

1572 books reviewed, which is an average of 92 books reviewed a year I aim to hit 200 by the time the blog turns 21

From 136 countries, I slowly like adding a country every once in a while for me, the aim isn’t to read a book from every country it is depth in every country over time, so it will be much the same as I am currenttly doing where so far this year I’ve read 51 books from 22 countries 45 of those books were in translation this year so far .

 

The most read countries over  the last 17 years

  1. France 187 books
  2. Germany 126 books
  3. Italy 72 books
  4. Spain 71 Books
  5. Japan 66 books
  6. Argentina 58 books
  7. Austria 51  books
  8. England 43  Books
  9. Netherlands 37 books
  10. US 37 books

A top ten I can see over the next decade: Korea maybe coming into the top ten. The next ten countries after that are a number of Latin American countries, with over 150 Latin American books over the years.

Blog Highlights ]

Going to both the Old IFFP prize ceremony and the London Book Fair.  Getting asked to talk to the Swedish translators.  Having the blog mentioned on a book cover a few times. Doing the shadow panel, of course. Being part of the blogging community, I have still tried to comment more this last year or so. I never quite got over the loss of Google Reader for keeping up with blogs, as I still see a bright future for blogging among passion bloggers like me, where it is about reading and sharing my reading journey, not trying to be anything other than the everyman of world lit!

The coming years

I am always flirting with the idea of Vlogging but can’t see it happening. If anything, I am now going to work on the quality of the pictures on the blog for posts; try to tie the blog in with my Instagram feed more over time.  For me, this is a hobby, and I won’t be trying to make money from it. I don’t have a Ko-fi or Patreon account, or a wishlist of books I’d like for myself; this is a passion, not a way to make a little bit of money.  I pay for my WordPress these days, but I don’t mind as it means I don’t have to worry about running out of space for the blog. I aim to hit 2000 books by the time the blog turns 21 in four years’ time. I would love to maybe join in a podcast or such once in a while. I also see the trend of my review posts getting longer over time; they have slowly grown since I started the blog. I also do hope to get back to London in the near future. I also hope to meet more of my fellow bloggers over time. Here is to the next 17 years of blogging fun

On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone for the comments, the books sent for me to read, the invites, and the chances I have been given over the last 17 years; it has made all this worth every minute.

The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

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The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez

Argentine fiction

Original Title – La casa de papel

Translator -Nick Caistor

Source – Review copy

I was pleased to see this fun novella reissued by Thousand Horsemen. As it was the second book I reviewed from Argentina back in 2010, it will now be the 58th book and the first reread I have done for Argentina, in fact only the second reread I have done for Argentina, over the years. But this is one of those novellas that, firstly, can be read in an evening. But it is also an ode to books themselves, as a single book is the main character in the book itself, and that is an old copy of Conrad’s The Shadow Line that was sent to a man who has since died.  Since I first reviewed the book, Carlos is still living in Uruguay; he is more of a critic than a novelist.  He writes for two papers in Uruguay as well as El Pais; he has also written a biography of Juan Carlos Onetti. Nick Caistor is still translating many wonderful books.

It was indeed a book, but not of the kind I had been expecting. No sooner had I opened the package than I felt an instinctive nervousness. I went to the office door, closed it, and returned to the broken-spined old copy of The Shadow-Line. I was aware of the thesis Bluma was writing on Joseph Conrad. But the extraordinary thing was that there was a filthy crust on its front and back covers. There was a film of cement particles on the page edges that left a fine dust on the surface of the polished desk.

I took out a handkerchief and to my astonishment picked up a small piece of grit. There was no doubt it was Portland cement, the remains of a mortar that must have been stuck more firmly to the book before someone had made a determined attempt to remove it.

The rather battered Shadow line in the parcel !

Now our book is narrated by the person who has taken over Bluma Lennon’s job as a professor of Literature, after she was struck by a car whilst reading Dickson. The discovery of a parcel from Uruguay containing a rather battered copy of Joseph Conrad’s Shadow Line.  This sends our narrator on a trip to Uruguay.  To find Carlos Bruna, the man that had sent the book. to the now dead Bluma. This leads our narrator to find a man who has disappeared as well, but who was a mad book collector in the process of building his own huge library in a remote part of Uruguay.  Leads our narrator into a world of bibliophiles, books, and the histories of the books they have and their readers. It is a sort of mystery, a love of books, and an obvious love of Uruguay.

He smiled a conspiratorial smile I willingly shared.
‘But unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘how many hours a day can I devote to reading? At most four or five. I work from eight o’clock to five in a position of some responsi-bility. But all the time I’m longing to be back here. In my cave, if you’ll pardon the expression, where I can spend a few happy hours until ten o’clock, when I usually go upstairs for supper.
I’m not interested in first editions. What I want is to have the book within reach in the best possible condition, otherwise I become anxious. These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repel-lent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust. From time to time, though, I have them fumigated just in case, because you can never be too sure. Silverfish drove Brauer mad.’
‘Did he keep his books in glass cases?’ I asked,

One of the many book collectors they meet trying to find out who carlos Brauer was

I see some people find this book annoying but a think it is a book that is sparse nature of the book with the gaps in the book are maybe meant be there they are alomost like gaps for the reader to fill. I said it was fable-like in my first review; I still think that it is a clever twist on the detective tale, centred on a dead woman, a missing man, and a book that connects them, but also about what books bring to us and how obsession works. I hadn’t reread Shadow Line when I first reviewed the book, but this time I got my edition and am slowly reading it, and it may have just a connection of the line between being a boy and a man; maybe the shadow line here is between being a book lover and a complete bibliophile obsessive. It is a book about books, readers, bibliophiles, and what happens when that goes over the edge: a woman killed reading Emily Dickinson rather than watching the road and a man who had built a mad library that has disappeared as well. I loved this more the second time around. I think reading 1500 books over the years has made me connect more with the characters. Do you have a favourite book that has books as part of the story in it?

Bait by Eugenia Ladra

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Bait by Eugenia Ladra

Uruguayan Fiction

Original title – Carnada

Translator – Miriam Tobin

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to have been sent this book from Daunt Books, and I was excited, as I have only read three other books from Uruguay over the years. I’m always looking to expand the scope of books from various countries on the blog, and this debut novel struck me as a perfect choice. It is always great to highlight new talent; the three previous writers I have featured from Uruguay have all been fairly well established.  This is a debut novel from a rising new writer that has been listed and won prizes elsewhere. It seems it is set in the small town the writer grew up in, a fishing village that has since become a port for huge container ships. A town full of pagan like ideas and macho idealsas a summer sun heats things up.

It was an afternoon at the beginning of that summer.

The heat started to relent and gradually Paso Chico ceased to be the deserted land it became after lunch, when the sun beat down brutally and not even the insects could rouse themselves out of their hiding places. People surfaced from their siestas, aired out their musty homes and joined the crowd that had gathered outside, partly to scope out what was going on, and also to get some air now the cool had descended, to see if they could refresh their sluggish bodies and dispel all that humidity.

A town on the point of boiling over in the heat

 

The book focuses on Marga, who is turning thirteen and becoming a young woman.  But in the small town of Paso Chico, she is shunned by those in the town.  This is one of those towns where time hasn’t quite caught up; traditions live on, from carrying a figure of the Mother Mary from house to house. It reminds me of the rural towns in Italy where things like this still happen.  Add to this that when she was born, Marga’s mother died, and the town had gone from drought to flooding, and this poor girl is one of those people who are seen but not seen, almost like a ghost to all in the village.  So, for her, when a ship arrives and a mysterious man, Recio, appears in this small town of stray dogs and sleepy bars full of men slowly getting drunk.  A place of traditional values in the heat of the summer.  This is a perfect mix for something to happen, especially when he captures the eye of this young marga. Especially as, like her, he has set the town twittering about who he is and what will happen if he stays. This in turn sets off a chain of events that blend violence, fear, and a town caught up in its own superstitions.

That same night Recio turned in early, not to follow the rules, but because he was in need of the sleep hed missed out on during his late nights at the bar. It was only at noon the next day, when Justa, Olga and Marga were having lunch as they did most days, their eyes engrossed in the soap opera, that the boy appeared. He wandered out of his room with one hand rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while the other covered his cock standing at half-mast from having just woken up. He dashed quickly to the bathroom and before disappearing behind the door, polite boy that he was, greeted the three women with a nod of his head, as if seeing them in the street at a distance.

Recio and Magra are like to ends of a newtons cradle each havong a knock on effect when they see each other

 

This is one of those books that female Latin American writers are doing so well.  The simmering undercurrent of male violence in a male-dominated world is captured here.  But also that mix of almost pagan-like superstitions and that sort of strong Catholic Christian beliefs, where both have become intertwined, so a change in weather or someone appearing out of the blue is seen as a curse or a foreboding that something is going to happen. It captures the chaos this can bring to a young girl on the cusp of being a young woman. It has a mix of Graham Greene’s Power and Glory, Fernando Melchor’s  Hurricane Season, and a nod to Juan Carlos Onetti with the construction of a fictional town on the cusp of the River Plate, like his Santa Maria, a dark, brooding place alongside the river.  It is a tale of coming of age, of not being wanted, and of the dark place that can lead one to. In a town full of men, a young girl becomes a woman in a masculine world. Do you have a favourite book from Uruguay?

 

Tree by Aya Koda

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Tree by Aya Koda

Japanese Non-fiction

Original title – 『木』 新潮社

Translator – Charlotte Goff

Source – Review copy

I was so excited when I saw this was available to review. The main reason is the connection to the film Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, which is set in Tokyo, and the main character Hirayama is shown as a reader, and when he one day visits the book shop, the book he picks up is this book. The shopkeeper says Aya Koda she deserves more recognition, she uses the same words we do, yet there’s something so special. What more could you want as an introduction to a writer? Aya Koda had been married and divorced before she ever wrote a book. In her forties, she wrote several books about her relationship with her father, Rohan Koda, a well-known Japanese writer, and also wrote novels. Also books in this style Zuihitsu a japanese style meaning follow the brush a way of piecing together memoirs in a stream of conciousness style this is a book made up of her reaction to trees.

Some kabuki costumes are uncommonly thick, such as Matsumaru’s in the tale of the three brothers Matsu-maru, Umemaru and Sakuramaru – named after pine, plum and cherry trees respectively. I have never touched Matsumaru’s costume, and have only ever glimpsed it from a far-away seat, so I suppose I can’t say for sure how thick it is, but whenever I look at the bark of an old pine tree, I remember Matsumaru’s kimono. Pines wear a heavy kimono. Or they wear them heavily, is perhaps more accurate. Their skin is covered in rough, dry fissures forming tortoiseshell-like patterns, the thickness of their bark clear to see from the depth of these cracks. Matsumaru’s costume features pine trees with snow-laden branches against a charcoal back-ground, creating a cool, clear colour scheme of black, white and blue; the kimono worn by real pines has a dirty kind of colour, its hexagonal fissures lending it an imposing quality. Incidentally, Matsumaru’s hair is incredibly thick, and pine trees will also often be blessed With a luscious head of needles.

 

 

Their rare fifteen pieces in this collection range from personal insights like a sapling she had from her father. To visit an island where the trees are covered in volcanic ash.  For me, I picked three pieces that show her drifting style. The first is the tree kimono around the way bark on some trees looks, and the history of trees and the kimono in fashion see unusual trees in a forest all stitched together. Then we have a chapter around a pair of brothers and their relationship to the woods and trees as master carpenters, their view of when trees are living and when they need to be felled. The sort of knowledge built over a lifetime is evident in the way she watches them treat the trees and wood around them. Then a story about the Sugi Cedar that starts with her looking at a concrete tetrapod and ends with the shape and symbolic nature of the Sugi tree. In Japanese culture, the tree is believed to be among the oldest living trees in the world on certain islands.

Back when I lived in Nara I was lucky enough to hear a number of stories from the Nishioka brothers, both of whom were master carpenters, but the lesson that left the deepest impression on me – which they emphasized in all of their tales, at every possible opportunity – was the living nature of wood.

The wood the Nishioka brothers were referring to was not the kind in trees still standing, but rather wood as a material. These carpenters believed that, just as trees have their way of living, wood has its own life, too. They suggested that we call the period while the tree is standing its first life, and its time as a material its second. Imagining that timber is simply dead tree, they told me, betrays a lack of understanding. Theirs was truly a craftsman’s way of looking at things. I remember, once, I was speaking to the younger brother, and he told me not to focus purely on the life of wood, either, but to also think about, as he called it, ‘wood which has died “

The chapter Trees standing up , trees lying down

 

Now this is one of those books I love. If you are a fan of Wenders films, you will love this. It is a perfect book for his drifting, road-movie-style filmmaking. I can see why it may have been chosen as the book brought in the film. If you are a fan of nature writing, it will appeal, as it captures a distinctly Japanese view of trees and their connection not just to the writer but to Japanese society as a whole. Also, I think it will appeal to Sebald fans. I just loved her passion for the natural world, seeing how trees have impacted her life, and the trees she has seen throughout her life.  The book was published after her death. I will now need to find her novels.  Has anyone read any of them?

 

 

Shadow blog Internartional booker winner 2026

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Our shortlist

It is just before and for the tenth time since the old IFFP prize became part of the booker we have read and voted on the long list of books and came up with our own shortlist as we have for the last ten plus years. So we decided by a mix of voting and a quick chat this week about our winner this year and our as ever honourable mention books. After what with the old IFFP prize shadowing has been 15 years of shadowing reading the long list for each of those years. We feel this is our last with the booker international for a while we will be carrying on as a shadow jury but for a different prize we will announce that at a later date thou.

The shadow blog winner of the International booker 2026

We had a close run race but this was the vote favourite by a nose. In our discussion we felt it was the best written book on the shortlist showing the versatility of Olga Raven as a writer for me the sheer atmosphere of the book and the writing was stunning haunting and it captured the feel of the time.

Honourable mention

Now I must say for me this was my favourite just by a nose but we are a team and we felt that The wax child was the better written book. This book does leave you thinking what is real and what isn’t and is he the husband at the end of it.

My thoughts on this year

I feel this year long list was the most even book wise for a few years. No real gem of a stand out book unfortunately Schattenfroh which was that sort of book isn’t eligible for this year. It was a year of fair reads the few stand out books made our shortlist there wasn’t a book we all hated like there has been a few times. But I feel after 15 years I started the old IFFP shadow and have been involved for all bar one year and that year I did read the long list so that is well over 160 book over the last 15 years. The time is right for a change we love our conversations about books and the time is right for the group of us to change to a new prize from next year!! Just a short post from me I’m sure some of my fellow jurors will write longer post till next year !

March 2026 Booker Month 26

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  1. She who remains by Rene Karabash
  2. The Deserters by Mathias Enard 
  3. We are Green and Trembling by Gabriel Cabezón Camára
  4. The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje 
  5. The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar
  6. The Witch by Marie Ndiaye
  7. The director by Daniel Kehlmann
  8. Erased by Miha Mazzini
  9. Taiwan travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

It is always the same at this time of year: before the Booker, there was the old IFFP prize. I always start by reading the longlist of prizes. I was very pleased when this year’s longlist came out, as it had books I had planned to read. It was a journey that started in Bulgaria, with a second story I read about the Sworn Virgins. Then to France and an old favourite, Mathias Enard, and a tale about a father, war, and a deserter. Then we are in South America, and a pioneering woman living as a man. Then a man who has lost his memories of post-World War I is claimed by his wife, or is she?  Then, families escape post-Shah Iran, and it follows them in Germany and back to Iran, where a woman is a witch in a small village where her daughters are. Then, a memoir of a director who got caught in Nazi Germany and still made films about making films under the Nazis Regime. Then, a break, and a stunning tale of a woman who lost her identity in a government glitch and struggles to keep her Baby. Then a pair of women, one Japanese, one Taiwanese, travel Taiwan on a year-long tour and eat their way around.

Book of the month

I will pick this, it is a great gem of a book. I want to avoid pinning a Booker as we are in the middle of our shadow jury debates. This book was written when Miha Mazzini saw a report about the 20,000-plus people removed from Slovenian government records. A tale of a pregnant woman finds she has vanished from government records, and they may take her newborn.

Non-book events

Watching-wise, I am in the middle of a binge of the cosy crime series Shakespeare and Hathaway.With Mark Benton as an ex-police officer, now a PI and his new partner played by jo Joyner. I love the way they play off one another, and Benton has a great world-worn feel about his acting style.Then, at the end of the month, I am trying to add a film or two. I watched a 90s film called The Outpost, a Kafka-esque tale of a woman promoted, or is she sent to a remote outpost in Hungary, in a trip that takes many days to get there. Then I brought a few albums: Black Country New Road, Geese 3D Country, and a collection of Daniel Johnson’s works on vinyl.

Next month

I will review the final two Booker longlist books.  Then it is Karen and Simon’s club 1961. For which I have already bought several books.I am starting them soon.  Then I have a couple of new books, and the EBRD  literature prize shortlist came out today; I hope to read a few from it. before the winner is announced, but it does have the epic Polish novel Ice on it . What are your plans for the next month ?

 

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

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The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

German fiction

Original Title – Lichtspiel

Translator – Ross Benjamin

Source – Personal Copy

There were a number of books on people’s guesses before the Booker International Longlist came out, and this is one I had seen on a number of longlist predictions.  Kehlmann had been on the Booker longlist and the old IFFP before that, and his books have been bestsellers in Germany over the years. So this was a book I had intended to read at some point. I know very little about the director at the heart of the story, other than he was the best-known German-language director in the Weimar Republic and had made films in the US just before World War II broke out.

The first compartment passes by, followed by a second. I suppose I have to step into the third, I’m frightened, it passes by too. Come on, I tell myself, you ve experienced worse. As the fourth compartment rises in front of me, I close my eyes and stagger forward. I make it in-side, but would have fallen down if he hadn’t held me by the shoulder.

It’s a good thing he reacted so quickly.

“Let go of me,” I say sharply.

Getting out is even harder, of course. But he sees it coming, places his hand on my back, and gives me a little push. I stagger out, he holds me steady again, thank God.

“Stop that!” I say.

It smells of plastic; from somewhere comes the hum of large machines. We walk down a corridor with signed photos of grinning people hanging to the left and right. A few of them I recognize: Paul Hörbiger, Maxi Böhm, Johanna Matz, and there’s Peter Alexander, who for some reason has scrawled With great thanks to my dear, dear audience under his signature.

from one of the opening chapters

The book follows the course of Pabst’s life, a man caught up in time. I think, for me, this is a perfect example of Javier Cercas’s Blind Spot.  The book is about Pabst and the Nazis, the blind spot being the truth of what really happened and why. It also has a turning point when his mother falls ill, just as the war in Europe is starting to spread, he is back in Austria and is caught having initially managed to get his family to the US in the early thirties, and now is faced with having to make films.  The book is told from the point of view of his fictional assistant as he struggles with making films and not being seen as a Nazis at the same time.  We see a man walking a tightrope in history; the German title Lichtspiel, light spiel, light game, is maybe more than an old word for cinema, but maybe for walking the line between light and dark. The book finishes after the war and discusses how he was viewed for making a number of films during the war.

She had kept him waiting for forty-five minutes not because she had been busy, but because she treated every visitor that way. The whole time she had stood by the window, watching the colorful birds as they stalked and strutted back and forth. The gardener had once listed the names of all the species for her, but her memory had never been good; usually while filming, someone stood next to the camera holding a card with her lines written in large letters. That was why she had developed a certain restlessly searching gaze, which appeared very mysterious on-screen.

He knew Garbo having cast her before fame

 

As I say, this book is about a blind spot, that place where we question what the truth is, what happened, and what happens when a parental illness leaves Pabst at a turning point in his life.  The man who lived with Louise Brooks and didn’t want to be like Leni Riefenstahl seems like a puppet of the Nazi regime. Art in the time of war is always hard to make, and this shows one man’s struggle to do so. We see a director as almost an actor in his own film of his life.  Our perspective is seeing how he reacts to all that faces him and how that will affect him after the war. I wish I had a better awareness of his films. He was a name I didn’t know a lot about. But I hope to maybe watch a few of his films over time, just to fill in some of the gaps around the man.  How do you make films and not be seen as a nazis wehen making films for the Nazis must have been a hard task, but what else could he have done? That is the question: what would have happened had he said no? Have you read this or any of his books?

 

 

Killing the Nerve by Anna Pazos

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Killing the Nerve by Anne Pazos

Catalan Non-fiction

Original title – Matar El Nervi

Translators -Laura McGloughlin and Charlotte Coombe

Source – Subscription edition

I have said before that one of my favourite publishers that have appeared in recent years is Foundry editions of all the books that they have published I haven’t disliked a single one I have read, and this is a piece of Auto Journalism from  Catalan writer Anna Pavos, it follows her twentiers where she did what a lot of young peiople did and take on the digiatl nomads world of working around the world. How people run away to escape their own world is something I can relate to. I also worked abroad in my youth. But not as many places as Anna does. Anna Pazos captures several moments and also what it is like to feel rootless at times.

For a while I was one of those people who talked about Thessaloniki with that fanatical glint. I defended and praised the city as if it were a lost Arcadia. In my case, the deception was particularly perverse because I knew deep down that I’d been unhappy there, with an overwhelming, rootless misery like I’d never known. But my urge to be the kind of person who enjoys and reveres Thessaloniki was more powerful than the memory of my failure. The reasons for the defeat were concrete and shameful, and they had to be masked by an objective knowledge of the history and particular circumstances of the city. I tried, unsuccessfully, to protect myself with a biblio-graphie shield to deal with my failure, as we so often do in life.

Her time in Greece

The book begins when she has the chance to study in Thessaloniki as an Erasmus student. AS the book opens, she recounts that this was the last time she had a fever years before the pandemic in a cheap room she rented. What comes across is a typical late teen experience of drinking, trying to avoid falling pregnant, as she mixed with the other students. Through them, she has her eyes open as they come from around Europe. The n because she can write, she ends up in Israel, where she views the conflict and gains insight, but, like many, finds the whole thing maybe too much at times. She then wanders Europe for a while. She then gets a boat to America and arrives just as the MeToo movement is gaining momentum. Eventually end back home viewing her home of Barcelona differently than she did as Covid is about to hit. All this, and she looks back at her family life along the way.

Rumour has it that Roiphe is writing an incendiary essay for Harper’s Magazine. In it, she not only questions the strange energy taking over the #MeToo era, she also reveals the name of the woman who created a spreadsheet for female workers in the media world to anonymously report their male co-workers.

The spreadsheet, which has been circulating for a while now, gathers details of various types of aggression, from a disagreeable encounter over drinks to inappropriate touching at work or sexual harassment. Once the accused’s name is added to the list, his offence is on the same level as all the others. It’s all now perceived as part of a continuum, outpourings of the same unbridled misogyny we’ve agreed to call “rape culture”

Anna was there when the Metoo movement broke

There is a reason we want to run. That is at the heart of Outrun and books like Wild. Part of this is explained in the book why Anna feels trapped in Barcelona. I get it, I had family problems and a drive to escape where I was from, and when that door opened, I took it and lived in Germany for a few years. But she also captures the nomadic nature of a lot of young lives. There is a way that many young people can have access to more places and opportunities to see them than before. That is what she has caught the new digital nomad world from Greece, partly through Israel and the US, and back home. I’m not sure why this has been seen less than the other Foundry books. For me, this is the other side of some of the fiction books I have reviewed in the last year. Perfection or a Little Dinner both deal with the modern world of the 21st century, and this is a 21st-century account of one woman’s travels and views. Have you read this book? Or a non-fiction work that captures the digital nomad life of travelling here and there!

 

 

Loooking forward a state of the blog and 2026 Plans

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I have decided to draw a line under the reviews for this year. I just ran out of steam the last month. Part of me is thinking I am actually so excited about next year on the blog and just wanting to say fuck off to 2025, as the queen once said it has been my Annus Horribilis with Amandas heartattack and the changes that have brought to our lives. But I have also felt lost as a reader over the last six months. I think there is so much noise these days that I have felt like I have been doomscrolling for the last while, and my concentration is a lot less than it used to be, and this has impacted my love of reading, I feel. Simon Savidge talks a lot about what he reads. I never used to get it, but now I do. The noise of the book world is louder, but also, for me, feels like a massive cave now where I interact very little with folks. One-to-many pointing out grammatical errors makes me question every tweet these days, so I end up making more errors. (I SPOT my own mistakes so often, but i am used to them, so just forget them )I do wonder how these folks who, over the years, would cope with grammar in my brain, which is full of noise and constant overthinking, and just a lack of self-belief. This has even started to impact me, as I think about why this noise is constantly in my head. So this last month I have turned to Chat gpt to firstly try and work out a few thiunbgs like a weekly routine to blog too which from the new year i will be doing I used to do my weekly planner religously as I need to know how my week looks or it ends up being me just sat watch old crimefilms and you tube and ragin at the state of the country Mr Trump and just so many other things.The impact of what happened to my beloved has had a ripple effect and made me want to kick-start the blog and celebrate my love of reading

Don’t get me started on book creators and having to pay to join folks’ book clubs. So the first part of next year will be building the routine back up. I have a new hourly planner. Then I have set up a Discord, which, if folks want to join, is a place to chat about books, similar to how we did back in the Twitter days. NBo book club, no paying for this and that. I have a blog that has reviewed over 120 countries. I have a depth of reviews I feel is a real achievement. But as I have heard say, there is no standing still; time moves on constantly. I have flirted with the idea of YouTube for the last couple of years,s but I  can’t see myself ever doing it. The blog is where my passion lies: improving as a writer and reader, constantly moving forward, discovering new countries, and continuously adding depth to the places I have read from, building the ultimate world canon. Still, to do this, I need to try and read a little more, get back to a blogging routine, and figure out how to do that well. One of my all-time favourite books about reading is Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, where Nina Sankovich read a book a day after the death of her sister. I know point blank I can’t read a book a day, just beyond me. I averaged 120 books a year and reviewed between 90 and 100 on average. So my plan is to read between 180 and 200 books next year to get off doomscrolling and kick-start my blogging.I said that before but I think it is a loss of routine and the noise of the world these days I love turn the clock back ten year or so but I can’t

I want to play with review styles over the year, try longer posts, shorter posts, different ways of putting over many voices, which I feel I have not so much held back but lost confidence in. Maybe I thought I met people. I am very overenthusiastic about books. In hindsight, this is my neurodivergent mind, which is also the reason I lack confidence in my voice at times, as I am from a generation where being neurodivergent wasn’t picked up on as much. So if you want the Discord, let me know. Another thing I will be doing is trying to tie the blog in with my Instagram and use both more in sync. I will be doing the Japanese literature challenge, then my Hungarian Lit month in February, which I am really looking forward to. I am also swapping the image of Winston slowly to me well a ai painted image of me on the blog and elsewhere and using the name Stu the reader just in case you have seen me and think it is someone else

I am being ambitious next year, but I just want a routine back to the blog when I post what I read and get them in sync, and also be a better member of the blogging community. A lot, but as I said, I have been using the last few weeks as planning for next year and setting things up with plans and also getting things like books for next month, sort of, the new planner, a new guide for how I want to review, sorting a Discord. The latest image on the avitars all building for 2026 and project 200. What are your plans for 2026 ?

Sorry I’m taking things slow

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

As ever I press on a post saying I’ll stop blogging and within mins I remember the things I love be honest I just need to slow down a bit and get back into enjoying reading again as I’m a bit out of love with it at the moment

The other girl by Annie Ernaux

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The Other Girl by Annie Ernaux

French memoir

Original title – L’Autre Fille

Translator – Alison L. Strayer

Source – Personal copy

I always talk about how it is like returning to a piece of gossip or a great story from an old friend, reading a book by Annie Ernaux. This will be the eighth book I have reviewed on the blog. The first was in 2014, back before Fitzcarraldo and before the Nobel win. Anyway, when this fell onto the doormat at Winston Towers, it was short enough for me to just read it that day, which I did, in fact, read twice over two days. As ever, she opens up about her life. In fact, this isn’t just her life; it is a corner of her parents’ life and a secret they thought she had never known about the other girl, the earlier daughter they had before her.

It is a sepia photo, oval-shaped, glued inside a yellowed cardboard folder, showing a baby posed in three-quarter profile on a heap of scalloped cushions. The infant wears an embroidered nightdress with a single, wide strap to which a large bow is attached, just behind the shoulder, like a big flower or the wings of a giant butterfly. The body is long and not very fleshy. The legs are parted and stretch out towards the edge of the table. Under the brown hair, swept up in a big curl over the protuberant forehead, the eyes are wide and staring with an almost devouring inten-sity. The arms, open like those of a baby doll, seem to be flailing, as if the child were about to leap from the table.

Below the photo, the signature of the photographer (M.

Ridel, Lillebonne), whose intertwined initials also appear in the upper left-hand corner of the front cover, which is heavily soiled and coming unglued.

When I was little, I believed – I must have been told –

that the baby was me. It isn’t me, it’s you.

There was another photo, taken by the same photogra-pher, of me on the same table with my brown hair pulled up in the same sort of roll, but I appear to be plump, with deep-set eyes in a round chubby face, my hand between my thighs. I don’t remember ever being puzzled by the – obvious – differences between the two photos.

It opens as she sees photos of Ginette

I can see why it took this long to write this well, 14 years ago, as it means most ot the people in her family that may have been upset about her writing about this were gone. The book sees her looking back at the other girl, the other siste,r the ghost sister that she never knew about, Ginette, the sister who had died many years before Annie was born it was one day in the shop her parents’ old shop, that she caught a brief conversation between her mother and a regular customer about the other girl and how she was nicer than her what other girl. Over the years, she gets a little bit more of other family members; nothing more of her parents, but later she finds pictures of Ginette years before she was born. This is one sister trying to find out about the other girl, the sister who died of Diphtheria many years before she was born. Something she should have had if they had known. An epitaph for a girl she never knew, but has maybe haunted her, and what her mother said about her being nicer than the other girl.

I cannot put an exact date to that summer Sunday, but I’ve always thought it was in August. Twenty-five years ago, while reading the journal of Cesare Pavese, I discovered he’d committed suicide in a hotel room in Turin on

27 August 1950. I immediately checked – it was a Sunday.

Since then, I’ve imagined it was the same Sunday.

It grows more distant every year – but that is an illu-sion. There is no time between you and me. There are words that have never changed.

Nice. I think I already knew that the word could not be applied to me, judging from the terms my parents used each day to describe me, according to my behaviour: bold, scruffy little madam, greedy, Miss Know-It-All, nasty girl, you’ve got the devil in you. But their reproaches rolled off my back, so sure was I of being loved by them, the proof of which I saw in their constant concern for little me, in addition to their gifts. I was an only child and spoiled on that account, always at the top of my class without making any effort, and in short, I felt I had the right to be what I was.

When she heard what her Mother had said in passing

This is what she does so well, or as the Nobel committee said, for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory. She looks and takes apart her own past. A ghost of a sister in these forty pages is there. She never knew her. These are the breadcrumbs, the watermarks, the dust of a child that died, and maybe had she not, would Annie have been Annie? They always say life is stranger than fiction, and time,e and time again, Ernaux shows us this in her writng. Her art is the art of self, of family, of the secrets every family carries in its background. This is a short book, not even fifty pages, but it hits hard and is one I will be rereading for many a year.

in the uk you can buy this book via this link 

 

 

The Yellow Sofa by Eça de Queirós

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The Yellow sofa by Eça de Queirós

Portuguese fiction

Original title – Alves & C.a

Translator – John Vetch

Source – Personal copy

As you all know, or if you don’t, two of my favourite weeks of the blogging year are Simon and Karen’s year club, and this is the tenth year of them running it, and most, if not all, of them I have taken part in, so as soon as the year was mentioned, which is 1925, 100 years ago. I looked at the list of books. I pick books that may have come out in 1925 in their original language most of the time. I saw this on the list of possible books. I had to take a double glance as I knew Eça de Queirós was a Victorian age Portuguese writer. He is one of those writers I have been meaning to get to for a few years, so this slim novella is maybe the perfect into. It has a different title in the US and the UK. I had missed this, and I ordered the US book. He is considered to be one of the leading writers in Europe from his generation. I am pleased that 1925 club finally gave me the push to read this writer.

ON THAT FATEFUL DAY, GODOFREDO DA CONCEI-çao Alves, stifled by the heat and out of breath through rushing from Black Horse Square, pushed open the green baize door of his office in Gilders Street, precisely when the wall clockover the bookkeeper’s desk wasstrikingtwo, in that deep tone to which the low entrance ceiling imparted a mournful sonority. He paused, checked his own watch, hanging on a horsehair fob on his white waistcoat, and he did not conceal a gesture ofannoyance at having had his morning wasted at the offices of the Ministry of Marine. It was always the same whenever his overseas commission business took him there. Despite the Director-General’s being a cousin of his, andalthough he had regularly slipped a silvercoin into the hand of the commissionaire, and had discounted letters of credit for two minor officials, there was always the same boring wait to see the Minister, endlessturning over of papers, hold-ups, delays, all the irregular creaking and disjointed working of an old machine, half falling to pieces.

The start of the day and its events that changed his future

The book follows Godofredo Alves, a businessman, the Alves of Alves and CO. The Co is his business partner, Machado, and his friend. This man is a lover and seems to his friend Godofredo a sort of wild lover. SO when he goes into their office one day and he finds his partner not there, Godofredo thinks of Machado having a liaison with one of his lovers. At this point Godofredo remembers that it is his wedding anniversary and decides to go grab a gift and surprise his wife whilst his friend is off again having a lover. SSO when he arrives home and finds his wife, Ludovina, sitting on their yellow sofa of the title of the book. She is in the arms of his business partner. The rest of the book follows the aftermath of this event in a time when honour means the world, and men still had duels!! What will he do? How will it all end?

Hearing her there, he turned, peeped in… And what he saw-good God!-left him petrified, breathless. The blood rushed to his head and so sharp was the pain at his heart that it almost threw him to the ground. On the yellow damask sofa, fronting a little table on which there stood a bottle of port, Lulu in a white negligee, was leaning in abandon on the shoulder of a man whose arm was around her waist, and smiling as she gazed languorously at him.

The man was Machado!

When he finds his friend and buisness partner with his wife!!

This is a book of manners, really a book of its time. It seems from what i have read that adultery, especially female adultery, is a recurring theme in several books by Queiros. The scenes of the events after the discovery of his wife in the arms of his friend and business partner. See a man struggle to control those around him after he banishes his wife back to her family, as he struggles to get the domestic staff to look after him like they did when his wife was there. This is a sort of upstairs-downstairs mixed with PG Wodehouse. It has humour, class, manners, honour lost, and honour all in i slim work that seems a lot more than its mere hundred and so pages when i read it. I enjoyed this as an intro to Queiros, for whom I know there are nine other books available on the Dedalus Books website. To read, including the Maias, his most famous book. So an interesting book for the first book of 1925, a book that came out 25 years after the writer had died. Found by his son. Have you read any of his books?

 

Nobel Literaure 2025

~ winstonsdad ~ 8 Comments

It is that time of year when we all think about who is going to win the Nobel Literature Prize. There is a feeling that in the last few years the prize has alternated between a female and a Male. This has been the case for the last dozen years. Now we can look at the place where winners have come from in rec net years if you count Abdulrzak Gurnah as an African writer. For me there is three options of where the winner could come from –

Latin America

Cesar Aira

The writer from Argentina writes short novellas, mostly set around his hometown. However, they encompass a diverse range of styles and topics. There are reviews on the blog of his books

Juan Gabriel Vasquez

He writes a mix of historical and literary fiction, mainly looking at Colombia’s

dark past. I have also reviewed some books from Vasquez 

Wildcard

Andres Neumann

I think it is a bit soon for Andres, but I loved Traveller of the Century by him and the other books I have read, he will be a winner one day

Spain

Enrique Vila Matas

A huge fan of Joyce, a clever writer who has written several novels. I have reviewed a number of his books. My personal favourite is Dublinesque an ode to Dublin, and Joyce uses Bloomsday as a framing device.

Javier Cercas

His non-fiction novel, The Anatomy of a Moment, of the attempted coup in Spain in the 80s, is a great read . His other books have history as a hook there are five books on the blog from him.

Manuel Rivas

A writer who should be better known, The carpenter’s pencil by him was a wonderful account of the Spanish Civil War.

Bernardo Axtaga

Another gem of a writer Obabakok, is an excellent insight into a village that has several books by him on the blog

Portugal

Antonio Lobo Antunes

If Angola is Portugals Vietnam, he has written a lot about the war there and the knock-on effect on his homeland and Angola itself. I have reviewed four of his books

So that is for the places

Then there is the tug of war between two writers from Hungary

Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Peter Nadas

Both have written epic books, Satantango and Parallel Stories.

Laszlo is maybe better known in the last few years.

Nadas for me is maybe the deserving winner, his books tackle his country’s past, and his huge memoir I have on my TBR

But I have reviewed books from both writers.

Wildcards

Ersi Sotiropoulos – I had hope to get to my review of her What’s left of the night.

Amitav Ghosh – He is high on one of the betting sites. I had read The Glass Palace 25 years ago, but I had not read anything else. Any thoughts on him

Fernando Arrabal, an actual wild card, is a much older Spanish writer, mostly of plays, but also 14 novels. I picked him as I have one of his novels and a writer that has maybe been lost over the last few years. Winning would be a shock. I’ll point to Ulrich Holbein, a writer who ran in the betting a decade ago or Bothos Strauss, two German writers.

What are your thoughts ?

What are your thoughts on a winners ?