Tag: NOBEL LIT

Vaim Hotel by Jon Fosse

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Vaim Hotel by Jon Fosse

Norwegian fiction

Original title: Vaim Hotel

Translator: Damion Searls

Source: Subscription book

There is often a feeling that when a writer wins the Nobel, they struggle to write after they win. They struggle with their next book. Well this is now the second part of Fosse latest trilogy. I had reviewed Vaim earlier this year; in fact, it is one of my favourite books so far this year. So when this arrived the other day, I had to read it straight away. I wasn’t sure whether it continued the story or was a different one. Well, it is a bit of both; the book is set in a small Norwegian village of Vaim. But it has the same setting but a new cast of characters.

Why exactly I came to Vaim and checked into The Vaim Hotel, no, I don’t know, I just took my leather shoulder bag, put my two suitcases in the boot of the car, a brown estate car I’d bought only the day before, and drove off, I didn’t know where I was going, but something would work out, I thought as I drove along and let the road take me wherever it wanted to take me, and after I’d driven for a few hours, when I saw the sign for Vaim at the side of the road, it felt like I’d driven long enough and I decided to stop there, or take a break from driving there anyway, because Vaim, yes, well, I had heard of it, but I’d never been to Vaim as far as I could remember, and if there was a hotel in Vaim then, yes, I wanted to check in there, I thought and when I saw the sign for The Vaim General Store on the wall of a building I turned off the road down by the shop, and I saw a quay in front of me, and there, on the left, yes, there was a whitewashed building with Vaim Hotel painted on it in black letters, so if the hotel was still open and running I could get a room for the night there, but chances were that the hotel was probably closed, there were lots of old hotels like this one around the countryside here and there that had had their day and were now closed,

The opening as he arrives not quite sure why

An unnamed narrator arrives with his shoulder bag and two cases.He isn’t quite sure why he’s done this, but when he passes the small village of Vaim, he decides to stop at the whitewashed Hotel. He isn’t sure, as he says many of these hotels are now closed. But when the door opens, the story starts. The owner greets him in a weird way, almost as though she knew him .But he has never been to Vaim or met anyone from Vaim. But he has a past incident many years ago; was this the event she was referring to? So, when in a hotel that seems empty, he is given room 407 on the fourth floor . He is bewildered, and when the woman Britta appears and tells him a small thing she has already told him, he starts to feel odd. Then, when he goes for a walk, another local, a sailor, talks to him. He is again left with a strange feeling.Then he goes to the shop, and the shopkeeper makes him buy a fishing set. Then he goes to the restaurant owned by Britta, where the sailor he met earlier is drinking. Over the course of the evening, he has more weird things happen. The sailor tells him a secret about the shopkeeper and Britta. The book ends with Britta talking about the man.

We called him The Guest, I never found out what his real name was, but the reason he stayed at Vaim Hotel was that he couldn’t pay his bill, for the simple reason that he couldn’t find his wallet, and he never found it again and to tell the truth I often thought it was a good thing he never found his wallet, because since he couldn’t pay his bill, yes, well, he had to work, it was good, yes, good for both him and me, and he was very useful to have around, because I really needed a helper, he wasn’t exactly especially handy, but of course he was much better than no one, the first thing I had him do was change the bulbs in the ceiling lights of all the rooms and when he was done I counted how many bulbs there were in the used light bulb bag, and the number was right, there were forty light bulbs in there, but I didn’t understand why the new light bulbs he put in burned out so quickly, the only explanation I could think of was that he just put the new light bulbs in the bag meant for the old ones instead of screwing the new ones in so that it would look like he’d changed all the bulbs the way I’d asked him to, but of course I can’t be sure of that,

Britta talks about him disappearing as a new guest arrives !

Again, he has written a book that coils in on itself; the story ends as it started, like Vaim did. The sailor is maybe Jatgeir from the first book. The boat he owns is called the Eline!! Is it the same shopkeeper that ripped him off as well? The story has a Pinteresque feel of never quite feeling safe, as the narrator does. Britta is an odd character; what does she know? Why does the narrator have a room on the top floor? I love some of the humour around a fishing set that appears and disappears, and whose is it?  The sailor told him this about how the village works. So in the last bit of the book, a new guest replaces the old guest who had vanished out of the blue. The Mobius coil of the narrative is similar to Vaim; the feeling that the book is starting a new guest again gives the sense of de ja vu, and then there are the unanswered questions about the guest and what has. happened? Have you read Fosse? This is review 1599 so bring on 1600!

 

Nobel literature prize winner for 2026 is Anne Carson

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We’ve just seen the Nobel Literature prize winnner is the Canadian poet, writer and translator Anne Carson. I have yet to read her I have her best known work Nox. She was running High in the betting for the prize this year. I like that a translator has won. I would love to know where to start with her works and which of her translations you’d sugggest.

Anne Patricia Carson

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her many books of poetry and translation include Antigonick, Autobiography of Red, The Beauty of the Husband, Glass, Irony and God, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, Nox, and Wrong Norma (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry). from her New Directions bio

 

House of Day , House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

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House of Day, House of Night

Polish fiction

Original title – Dom dzienny, dom nocny

Translator – Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Source = Subscription book

Well, with the Nobel due tomorrow. I happened to read this book recently; it is an earlier book from the Polish Nobel winner Olga Tokarczuk. Fitzcarraldo recently reissued it. I have had a mixed relationship with her books. I was looking forward to The Book of Jacob, but I struggled to get through it and felt it would take a rereading to fully understand. I loved Flights when I read it, and I also loved Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead. For me, this novel, which came before both of those books, is a little bit style-wise like Flights, as Olga calls her constellation novels, which is a similar style she uses for Flights, but it also feels familiar in place to the setting of Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead.

Between twelve and one a nice woman’s voice reads a serialized novel. It’s impossible not to listen to it; we all have to listen to every single novel because it’s on when we’re preparing dinner, when we’re peeling potatoes or making pierogi. Throughout April it was Anna Karenina.

He loves another woman, that is clearer still,” she said to herself as she entered her own room. “I want love, and it is lacking. So everything is finished! And it must be finished. But how?” she asked herself, and sat down in the armchair before the looking glass.’

Sometimes Marta comes over at noon and automatically starts helping with something, such as dicing the carrots.

She listens quietly and solemnly, but she never says anything – about Anna Karenina or any other novel we’ve heard read on the radio.

I loved the thought of local radio reading Tolstoy

I said this is like Drive Your Plough, as it is set in the remote Polish countryside; this time it is a village, and those who do live there form a chorus of voices telling the village’s story. We see the place Olga actually lives in: a village at the crossroads of Poland, Czechia, and Germany. The book sees all these nationalities in the village. Our narrator carries the narrative; she has just moved to the village of Nowa Ruda in the Silesia area of Poland. Her neighbour Marta is one of the women who have shaped the village, and through her we hear the village’s stories retold.  From the local drunk to folktales about deaths from mushrooms, to a dead boy straddling the border. A cacophony of tales builds a rich place scarred by the various countries that have ruled the village over the centuries.

THE GERMANS

Early this summer the Germans began to appear in the meadows. Their grizzled heads came floating by on a sea of grass, and their wire-rimmed glasses glittered gaily in the sunshine. So-and-So said that you can recognize Germans by their shoes, which are clean and white.

We don’t take care of our shoes, we don’t respect them, they’re clunky and always made of dark leather, or else we wear gumboots, rubber farm boots, into which Stasek Bachleda flicks the ash from his cigarette. Our shoes are made of PVC, garish black-and-white counterfeits of popular brands. They’re permanently muddy because of the sodden red earth, and misshapen from being repeatedly frozen and dried out again.

I smiled at her description of the Germans

As I said, as one of her earliest novels, this may show what followed in her other novels.  The constellation style of novel, as she calls it, shows how she used it in Flights to Much Effect.  Then the village setting.  She used it in Drive You Plough.  Anyone who has read this blog for any time knows I love a book set in a village; it has the whole world in a small place.  From death to birth.  From saints to Transvestite monks, all the world is here. I was reminded of stones in a landslide; as many of you know, one of my all-time favourites: the variety you can see in a small village, but also, at points, the way the voices were almost a chorus reminded me of the Irish novel Cré na cille, the way it captures the voices of the villagers, live and dead. I’m not sure if she had read or was aware of these other books, but it may show how villages can be similar; whether in the mountains of Spain or the middle of Ireland, there are stories, secrets, and all of life there with those living there.  Maybe this is the best place to start with Tokarczuk if you’re new to her, since it foreshadows her later work; especially, you can see the draw of the history that must have fueled her to write The Book of Jacob. Have you read this book, and who do you think will win the Nobel Prize in Literature tomorrow?

 

September 2026 round up

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  1. Love by Peter Nadas 
  2. A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness
  3. The Revolt of the Animals by Władysław Reymont
  4. Helping the Verbs of the Heart by Peter Esterházy
  5. Mending Bodies by Hon Lai Chu

I had a really quiet month on the blog. This is for two reasons: I am still off work with Anxiety and have lost a routine.  But that will come back as I start back at work next week.  But the main reason is Amanda, and I spent eleven days this month on a road trip around Scotland. As for reviews, I managed to review two of the giants of Hungarian Literature this month and then two Nobel winners. Then finished it off with a wonderful book from Hong Kong.

Book of the Month

I could have picked any of the books I reviewed this month, as they were all great reads. But for me, this book was complex, inventive and dealt with how we deal with death not just the normal parts we talk about, but things like Guilt and disappointments as well.

None book events this month.

I have included a few pictures from our time in Scotland: a view by the houseboat we stayed on, Leaky’s Bookshop, and a falls where I saw a salmon leap. Loch Ness, Skye, and the view from our hotel with a view to Skye. Then, a few days after we got home, we booked the Flying Scotsman from Chesterfield to York.  It was amazing how many people were by the railside as we passed, taking pictures. A once-in-a-lifetime experience on what is maybe the most famous train in the UK.  I’d add more, but Amanda wants to make a huge scrapbook of this trip; she saved receipts and took pictures of everything along the way.  As for what I watched this month, I have started rewatching True Detective and Babylon Five.  Since I got home, I’ve mainly been listening to the huge 12-disc collection of live recordings from Joy Division that just came out. They have cleaned up the live recordings as best they can; it shows the true clarity of Ian’s voice and how good they were as a band live.

Next month

I have slacked off this last couple of months, blog-wise.  But autumn is here; I tend to read more in the evenings, and I am back at work, so my blogging routine should return. AS for books, as you may know by now, I never plan too far ahead.  I have the books ready for Simon and Karen’s 1949 club. I actually picked two of the books up on the day we were in York with the Flying Scotsman.

What are your plans this month?

 

A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness

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A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness

Icelandic Fiction

Original title: Innansveitarkronika

Translator: Philip Roughton

Source – Personal copy

I have three other books by Halldór Laxness from the years he was a writer. I like him because he had a long career, and his books feature a variety of styles and examine various aspects of Icelandic culture, past and present, at the time he wrote.  This is one of the last books he wrote, and so far the last to be translated into English; there is one more book, A Narration of God’s Gift, yet to be translated into English.  What I missed in this edition, I hadn’t noted either: I got the UK Penguin edition, and it doesn’t have Salvatore Scibona’s foreword, which is in the US Archipelago Books edition.  I was looking forward to that, as I love Scibona’s debut novel from many years ago.  I knew he was a huge fan of Laxness; this is set in the area where Laxness grew up.  He, as ever, looks into Iceland’s relationship with its past and the Sagas. I would love to do a Nobel project one day with this, and another recent Nobel winner reading reminds me of how many more winners I need to read

At the end of the Middle Ages, after the land had been gnawed down to its roots and defaced by every available means of destruction, as is currently being done in Vietnam, and soil erosion left entire districts barren, people began living again like Robinson Crusoe. They contented themselves with rowing out to sea and hauling in “those damned four” instead of growing grain and brewing ale. And thus did they plod through the cen-turies, even forgetting to bathe for seven hundred years, despite having more hot water than any other nation on earth.

In such a valley, there was in fact no way forward and no way back. The theory of evolution had not yet been born and the goal was to stand still, at most to resemble one’s grandfathers.

The Past is something Laxness focuses on

The book is about a church and the history of the place where it is built, where the Skull of the famous Viking warrior Egill Skallagrimsson is buried, and how, over the years, this small country church grew up on that spot as well.  The book follows when, finally, a hundred years after a decree to take down the church in the 1770s, it is ordered to be torn down and its historic past lost.  But when the local farmer in the valley, Olafur, takes it to court to stop this from happening, we get the story now in the 1880s, and it is the story of a local serving girl, Gudrun, who gets by bartering her services.  It is about family ties, as Olafur feels he is descended from Egill. What is captured is a world long gone, one that Laxness would have seen the dying embers of as a child, a world where people would barter to get by.  Where people had Honour and would go without to be seen as honest. Beauty and darkness, as ever, are at the heart of Laxness’s work.

That same morning, around the usual time that people in the district started to stir, Reverend Jóhann rode out to collect signatures in support of the unification of the churches. He and the parish council chairman, Kolbeinn of Kollafjörfur, had arranged to meet. Reverend Jóhann spoke slowly and in a somewhat dusky tone, like a voice from the deep, whereas Kolbeinn of Kollafjörfur had humorous anecdotes at his fingertips that got others laughing, all except Reverend Jóhann. Now, as is often the case when such worthies feel out their fellows, they encounter little by way of rebuttal from the other parishioners, and in fact, find most of them agreeable to the business at hand.

The local vicar is also a character

I have reviewed a number of Laxness’s works; he always deals with his own country and its past, and sometimes with the country’s absurd nature.  I feel this is a book by an old writer looking back on something he heard of as a youth; supposedly, he came up with the story whilst travelling, but the setting is where he grew up in one of the remote valleys.  He likes to look back at Iceland’s past through the use of Egil, but sees how those sagas and myths have transferred to the contemporary setting, or, as in this case, the late Victorian age.  I also found Gudrun, as a character from a long-ago age, a true old-fashioned, country-type servant.  She was called a freewoman for the way she lived. Thus, getting by on handwork to make a living.  For me, this is a gateway book to his writing, as it is so short that it can be read in a single day.  Have you read Laxness yet?

The Thief and The dog by Naguib Mahfouz

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The Thief and the Dog by Maguib Mahfouz

Egyptian fiction

Original title – اللص والكلاب; al-liṣ wal-kilāb

Translators – Trevor Le Gassick and M. M. Badawi (Revised by John Rodenbeck)

Source – Personal copy

I went from a nearly Nobel winner to the only Egyptian writer to win the Nobel prize, Naguib Mahfouz. I have reviewed three books from him over thwe year s and I am on the quest to read all his books over time I do have gthe Cairo trilogy in a nice hardback edition to read but have that as the last book I will read from him so every time he crops up on the club year I read him this one was the book he brought out in 1961. AS ever, it captures an Egypt and Cairo that is changing just after. A revolution has happened, and we are seeing this new world through the eyes of Said, a thief who has just come out of prison to see the world he knew has changed. He now wants to win his wife back and get the people who put him in Jail

Ilish went to fetch the girl. At the sound of returning footsteps Said’s heart began to beat almost pain-fully, and as he stared at the door, he bit the inside of his lips, anticipation and tenderness stifling all his rage.

After what seemed a thousand years, the girl ap-peared. She looked surprised. She was wearing a smart white frock and white open slippers that showed henna-dyed toes. She gazed at him, her face dark, her black hair flowing over her forehead, while his soul devoured her. Bewildered, she looked around at all the other faces, then particularly at his, which was staring so intently. He was unable to take his eyes off her. As she felt herself being pushed toward him, she planted her feet on the carpet and leaned backward away from him. And suddenly he felt crushed by a sense of total loss.

The man that sold him out and is now with his wife!

The book follows what happens after Said is released from prison. The book is in a stream-of-consciousness style as we follow what happens to him when his estranged wife, Nabawiyya, ends up with the man who put him in jail, his former friend Llish. Add to this that his friend and former mentor, Rauf, is now a journalist and has moved on with his life as well. It sees what happens when a man like Said, a thief, but he also wanted to be part of the revolution, has missed all this, even his own daughter, Sana, is scared of him now. The only people who will help him are a prostitute and a shady cafe owner. This is a man who, in his head, was like a Robin Hood-like figure of the revolution, but now nothing is going his way.  Will he have his revenge? As ever, the book has Cairo as a backdrop. The cafe owner reminds me of the book Coffeehouse, but, like the character in that book, it shows how a city and a world that is constantly changing, like Egypt, had been through during the 20th century, can catch some people out and make others successful, no matter how shady their past was.

He walked on until he reached the Zahra offices in Maarif Square, an enormous building, where his first thought was that it would be very dithcult to break into. The rows of cars surrounding it were like guards around a prison; the rumble of printing presses behind the grilles of the basement windows was like the low hum of men sleeping in a dormitory. He joined the stream of people entering the building, presented himself at the information desk, and asked in his deep

“public” voice for Mr. Rauf Ilwan. Staring back with some displeasure at the bold, almost impudent look in his eyes, the reception clerk snapped, “Fourth floor.” Said made for the elevator at once, joining people among whom he looked rather out of place in his blue suit and gym shoes, the oddness emphasized by the glaring eyes on either side of his long aquiline nose.

A girl caught his eye, which made him curse his ex-wife and her lover under his breath, promising them destruction.

Even his mentor and friend that pushed him to do what he did has moved on

I love Mahfouz’s writing; he is Cairo, he is the man he writes about. He knew people like Said, Rauf, Llish, and the cafe owner (of course, Mahfouz loved cafes and watching people ). This is told in a stream-of-consciousness style to make you feel like Said, as he is caught up in a world that has moved on without him. Revenge is the heart of the book but also for me a sorrow of a man lost to time there must have been many men like Said dropped in it and then left by the people around him when he needed them most. I feel there must be a character like Said, whom he met one day in a cafe, heard his tale, and whose story this book is the result of.  Mahfouz loved sitting in Cafes watching and talking. I said before that Cario is always in his books, like Dublin is in Joyce, Dickens’ London, or Proust’s France.

 

 

Diary of a mad old man by Junichirō Tanizaki

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Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichirō Tanizaki

Japanese fiction

Original title – 瘋癲老人日記 Fūten rōjin nikki

Translator – Howard Hibbert

Source – Personal Copy

Anyone who has been around the blog over the last few years knows the other event in the blogosphere, apart from the Year’s Shadow Jury, is the biannual Year Clubs that Simon and Karn have run for the last decade or so. In fact, I love these so much. It is mainly finding the books for the blog for each year they have chosen. I go with the year the book came out in its original Language. So it means I cover the rest of the world for the years they pick. First, this week we have a man who just missed out on the Nobel Prize. He was on the shortlist of people in the year he died. It will be the fifth book over the years I have covered by Tanizaki a writer I have grown to like over the years and this wry book of old age is a fun book written by a writer in his later life himself.

This afternoon I asked Satsuko to take me out for a drive around the Meiji Shrine. I thought I had escaped, but my nurse saw us leaving and said she’d come along. The whole thing was spoiled. We were home in less than an hour.

July 2

For the last few days I’ve felt that my blood pressure is rising again. This morning it was up to 18.

Pulse 100. At the nurse’s urging, I took two tablets of Serpasil and three of Adalin. The pain and chilling in my hand is acute too. Although it seldom keeps me awake, last night it woke me up and I had Miss Sasaki give me an injection of Nobulon. I find that Nobulon works for me, as far as that goes, but it has unpleasant aftereffects.

“The collar and sliding bed are here. Would you like to try them?”

I’m not very eager, yet the way I feel makes me willing to give them a trial.

A mix of the visit by the daughter in law and his medical state

The book is the diary of a man recovering from a stroke. Utsugoi is in hios late seventies and has lost the use of one hand due to the stroke and this diary follows the few months that follow the stroke it is made up of the actual recovery, but also the visit he has from his daughter-in-law, Satsuko a former dancier with her own daerk past secrets thios forms the other dynamin=c in hte book as she lets the old man kiss her legs and feet as this is all his libido will let himk do this is about power nad desire and what happens when the mind is still active but eh body has given up the ghpost. a look at the dynamics between the father and daughter-in-law, the sort of twisted power trip she lets him lick her body as he buys her gifts and says he wants her feet as part of his gravestone. This is all a mix of sexual tension and black humour of a man on his way out, but still, after fulfilling his fetishes.

August 8

From 1 to z p.m. I had my nap, and then stayed in bed waiting for Dr. Suzuki. Meanwhile I heard a knock on the bathroom door, and Satsuko calling.

“Father, I’m going to lock this!”

“He’s coming, is he?”

“Yes.” She stuck her head out for a moment, but promptly banged the door shut and locked it.

Though I had only a glimpse of her I noticed a cold, sulky look on her face. Evidently she had already taken a shower; water was dripping from her vinyl cap.

More of him in the hospital and Satsuko being around

This is one of those books that makes you think about growing old, but also about desire and what happens when you have it but no way to show it! This is what could happen. It is about a woman willing to make money from a man she is a daughter-in-law to, a man driven by his desires and what they entail. It’s like a weird Japanese take on a Carry On film, a sort of Carry On Old Man in the hospital.  The main character is like a posher version of Sid James with Money, and Satsuko could be any of the female characters from the films, in a way. It is a book around desire and the male libido, with a comic look at growing old and still feeling Horny and what happens when your dancer daughter-in-law takes advantage of that. The book has been made into a couple of films. I can see it makes a good film, just it mixes a black humour and a man not quite ready to die yet. It also has a medical side throughout the book and ends with the reports of the nurse and doctor who treated him. Have you read this book ?

 

Vaim by Jon Fosse

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Vaim by Jon Fosse

Norwegian fiction

Original title – Vaim

Translator – Damion Searls

Source – Subscription edition

It is always fun to get a new book from Jon Fosse. He is one of those writers in recent years whom I have come to love. His books are beautifully written, with recurring themes like duality, mirrors, existential themes, and motifs. This is his first book since he won the Nobel, and one always feels that one of two things can happen when a writer wins a prize as big as the Nobel. That’s why they struggle to match up to the earlier books, or they carry on, and I wondered which way Fosse would go. I don’t know why I was worried; this is another slice of what we have all come to like about his books, and the first in a new trilogy.

I can’t remember how many years, and of course it was a stupid idea to name the boat after Eline, but I’d probably heard that a boat should have a female name, and since the name Eline was the one that was constantly spinning around in my head, yes, the boat got named Eline, Eline the person had already been on my mind for several years, often to the point where it was hard to stop thinking about her, yes, and so that’s how the boat got named Eline, and there was a lot of talk going around about that name, yes, that’s what Elias told me, yes, apparently it was so bad that some people called me Eline instead of Jatgeir, there’s Eline, they said when they saw me, and when Elias told me that yes well I didn’t ask any more questions, that was just the way it was going to be on that subject, there was nothing I could do about it anyway, that’s how it was, and well it was nice that Elias dropped by to see me every now and then, he was the only person who did, and he was the only person I ever dropped by and visited either and now I can already see the bay there at Sund,

Elias and how Jatgeir called his boat after the girl he loved at a distance

This book is divided into three parts the first is about an older man Jatgeir we not told how old he is other than he has no family and his beard is greying and he has a boat called the Eline after a girl he had loved all his life and now in what from the way he talks is his lster life he has gone on a yearly trip to a city Bjorgvin from his small fishing village of Vaim. He has no real reason other than to fetch a spool of black thread and a needle to fix a button back on a shirt. When he ends up getting stung by the shopkeeper and her son over the thread, he goes back to his boat, then, after paying 250 krona for the thread, he heads out. This is where the story starts to get strange. He tells of the only other person to use the boat with him, Elias, and that he is now heading to Sund and to a smaller port for the night. He again visits the shop, purchases a second needle and thread, and is shocked to pay the same price. So that night, he hears a voice, and it is Eline, the girl he likes but never told, talking to him, and they elope as she has missed Vaim, his home, and where she grew up. Then, in part, we hear from Jatgeir’s friend Elais after Jatgeir has come back with Eline, and the two friends who often spent time together have not been together for a year and a day. This is a phrase Eline uses in the first part of the story. Then he is visited by a ghost, but who is the ghost? The third story loops back to Frank Eline’s husband on Sund and his story, but as ever, there are loops of names and phrases and boats with similar names in this tale, and it is very strange in the end

She called me Frank, from the first time we met she called me Frank – hi Frank, nice to see you, she said to me, or something like that, it was in Bjørgvin, it was at the restaurant called The Fowl where I’d gone with the two guys I fished with on the Elinor, the three of us did all kinds of fishing on that ship back then, and then it would sometimes happen that if we’d had a good catch and got a good price for the fish that we’d take a little trip to Bjørgvin, dock at one of the quays on The Wharf, spend a night there usually, getting in sometime in the afternoon and leaving at dawn or sometime the next morning

Frank or Olaf as he is meeting Eline for the first time in the third part of the book

This book is like a Möbius loop, as you have the feeling ELine is going around and around with these two men, like a moon orbiting two planets: as one pulls, she goes from Jatgeir to Frank, or is it Olaf who was Frank? Is he Olaf? Add to this: boats with similar names; both men have boats called Eline, and the other boat has a similar-sounding name as well. Then we have the recurrent mention of a year and a day in the book; it keeps cropping up, but at other times, time is fluid, and the events seem to have happened over a year, while in other passages, it is this year and a day that is said. Friendship love moen that are very quiet and a woman that likes to get her own way lead to a novella that twists in on itself and at times seems to repeat events and places in the first and last story, like the two men are ghosts that could have met at some point . This is a classic piece of Fosse, and I can’t wait to see where he takes this story, how many more twists and turns we get from the folk on Vaim.This is the best books I have read this year so far.

Advent by Gunnar Gunnarsson

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Advent by Gunnar Gunnarsson

Icelandic fiction

Original title – Advent

Translator – Philip Roughton

Source – Personal copy

I saw this on a YouTube video a while ago. It was mentioned it was a novella, and with the Christmas theme, it seemed great as it is Advent time. The book is by an Icelandic writer who wrote more in Danish than Icelandic. Back then, when he was writing, this meant his writing had spread to the Nordic countries and Germany. He was up for the Nobel Prize many times. In fact, when Haldor Laxness won, there was a brief time it was considered that Gunnarsson could have shared the prize with him. So it is great to see a new translation of a book that was first published in English in the 40s.It also had an afterword by the great Jon Kalman Stefansson, one of my favourite all-time writers.

Benedikt sniffed the hay, lifted the sack: You thought more about Eitill’s belly than my old back when you filled this!

The farmer chuckled, and as they went in, he pinched the candle’s wick between two fingers. It’s most merciful to a candle not to allow it to languish uselessly, but rather, to revive it on occasion to a life of service – and this, of course, is most thrifty as well.

They went to the family room and there met the housewife and group of children, and the Benedikt who was a guest in the house had food set for him on a table leaf under the gable window: smoked meat straight out of the pot with potatoes in white sauce – good food for cold days, real Christmas food.

As he sets off getting ready

Advent takes us to the dark, cold winters of Iceland and a yearly activity that is done by a shepherd, Benedikt, for the last 27 years, he has headed up to the distant fields with the sheep. Had fed on during the summer to fetch back the last few that have got stranded and cut off there. He does this with his trust dog Leo and a ram called Etill (which made me smile, it brought back memories of a story of a family friend in Ireland that adopted a lamb that grew and thought it was a house pet, like a dog). This was how I imagined the ram part of the sheepdog. What we follow is this journey he has done many a year with his backpack supplies as they head from bothy to bothy in search of those last sheep. That is it, but the beauty is in the atmosphere.

Now the stray sheep in the mountains would surely be buried in snow, covered over by a snowy winter blanket before he could find them and bring them home. Because you really couldn’t hope that they would have the sense to seek the heights – the heights, where the wind blew hardest, but which were their only salvation when earth and sky stand as one. When wildness rages, you hardly dare hope.

And if they had indeed headed to the heights, they may just as well have frozen to death! But now he wanted to sleep. Or just lie there alone. A person shouldn’t share his anxieties with others. Everyone has enough of their own.

And now they slept in the farmhouse’s small family room, where heath and mountains met.

And outside, the storm raged, raged and razed; many a storm raged around the world, many things happened. For this was just a small recess of the world. Here, practically only the sky raged;

winter is hitting hard will he find the sheep !

I don’t have an adult Christmas book. One of the reasons I picked this is to add to the few things I like this time of year. I love the box of delights, I will flick through and every. A few years ago, I read through this Christmas kids’ book. Another go to is Conna Doyles tale The Blue Carbuncle A holmes story. Now I will be adding this to my winter reads, a tale that brings you to this yearly Advent adventure of fetching the lost sheep. It isn’t the journey so much as the way Gunnarsson builds the atmosphere; the three face the biting winds, snow, and the depths of the Icelandic winter. The country and weather is almost the fourth character in the book.  The snow almost falls off the page; you nearly need mittens to hold the pages as you read !! It is about existence and nature and so ,uch more as we see in Steffansson after word.If you have read him, you’ll like this short novella, and if you haven’t read him yet, what great writers have you yet to discover! Do you have a favourite Christmas tale?

The Splendor of Portugal by António Lobo Antunes

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The Splendor of Portugal by António Lobo Antunes

Portuguese literature

Original title – O Esplendor de Portugal

Translator Rhett McNeil

Source – Personal copy

As I said in the last post, the run-up to the Nobel usually sees me reading a few Nobel hopefuls. With all that happened, I’m a little late reviewing them. I had thought it might be Atune’s year to win. He is the soul of his country’s past, a man who experienced much of what he writes about as a doctor who served in the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Having spent time in Angola in the seventies, this book looks back at that period, but as he does, he also observes the fall of other colonies in southern Africa, such as the Belgians in Congo. But what struck me as I read this is the parallel with events and feelings in Vietnam and the American experience in that war.

There’s something terrible in me. Sometimes at night the rustling of the sunflowers wakes me and, in the darkness of the bedroom, I feel my womb growing bigger with something that is neither a child, nor swelling, nor a tumor, nor illness, it’s some sort of scream that, instead of coming out of your mouth, comes out of your entire body and fills up the fields like the howling of dogs, and then I stop breathing, grab the headboard hard and a thousand stems of silence slowly float inside the mirrors, awaiting the dreadful clarity of morning. At such times I think I’m dead, surrounded by workers’ huts and cotton, my mother already dead, my husband already dead, their places at the table faded away, and now I live in mere rooms, empty rooms whose lights I turn on at dusk to disguise their absence. As a child, before we came back to Angola, I watched the lynching of the town lunatic in Nisa. Kids on the street were afraid of him, dogs ran away from him if he happened to pass by, he stole tanger-ines, eggs, flour, would install himself in front of the high altar and insult the Virgin, one day he flayed the belly of a calf from its neck to its groin, the animal walked into the town square tripping over its own entrails, the farmers from the nearby farm grabbed the lunatic

This long passaage of the mother about the things she had seen caught me !

What this book does so well is capture the whole effect of the fall of Angola through the prism of one family and their servants. The Alemida Family is led really by the Mother Isilda, a strong woman who is like a lot of people of her generation, proud of their settler life in Angola and what they have as a  life. This is set over two times in the late seventies as Angola starts to fall. How the family copes with this from Father Amadeu, who seems to have just accepted the fall and has sunk into the bottle. The children from the Oldest Carlos is he really Amadeu’s son, is something he feels, looking as though he may be mixed-race. Rui, the middle child, we see later on, is broken and in an institution after all that had happened, and he saw it when he was a child. Then, the youngest of the three children, Clarisse, is a wild, angry woman who uses her lovers to seek revenge on her family in a way. The book also sees them many years later, after the events in 1978 in Lisboa, as they gather in 1995 for a Christmas meal. The chapters alternate, and we see the events from all angles of the family.

for the most part, his epilepsy an earthworm gnawing holes in his head, my mother used to take him to the doctor in Malanje, when she returned home with him, even though shed bought a handkerchief for herself, you could tell shed been crying, she left Rui in the kitchen went upstairs and took ages to come down to the dinner table, her eyes swollen and her voice worn-out, piercing everything with her stare but not noticing anything at all, refusing to eat the soup, refusing to eat the fish, lying on her bed at night, you could hear her sobbing mixed with the thousands of other noises without origin or cause that inhabit the silence, I shook Clarisse and Clarisse

I liked the desciption of Rui epilepsy being like an earthworm through his brain !

I was reminded of this as I watched the film Apocalypse Now, which had similar themes to this book, especially in the new redux version, during the part where they spent time with the French plantation owner. Because in a way, this is Portugal’s Vietnam and the horrors that happened at the time, but also the way it has affected the country since. This is what I love about Atunes’s writing: it is dark but captures the horror of it all, and how it affected each member of the family. I have seen him described as Faulkner-like in his writing. For me, this has echoes of the polyphonic voices Faulkner had in something like As I Lay Dying. The same dark gothic feel. I was surprised by how they didn’t admit defeat until the troops were at the next plantation to theirs. It captures the dying embers of colonialism and the effects on this one family all those years later. Each member has reacted and coped in their own way with the horrors and the loss of that time. I always feel he has seen this firsthand in the seventies, as he was a doctor during the Angolan war. Have you read any books that make you feel the horrors and pain as though you were there? As for the Nobel, I hope he does win one day, but hell, he is in his mid-80s, get around to it, guys!

 

 

What’s left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos

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What’s left of the night by Ersi Sotiropoulos

Greek fiction

Original title – Ti ménei apó ti nýchta

Translator – Karen Emmerich

Source – Personal copy

I had hoped to do this review a few weeks ago, but life has got in the way as you all know. It was one of those books I try to read every year before the Nobel prize comes out, and you look down the list of favourites for the award, and there are always a couple of gaps, and Ersi Sotiropoulos is one she has been high up in the betting the last few years. She was made a favourite by the media in Greece the year Han Kang won, so if it comes down to male and female winners, she may be a favourite for next year. Anyway this had grabbed my attention as it is set in Paris a city I have yet to visit other than in fiction. I tend to travel so much in my reading, but I am someone who hasn’t had much in my own life. It also uses the poet C.P. Cavafy when he himself visited Paris at the end of a European tour before he became the great poet and was still young and discovering his sexuality, he had a rather mad three days in Paris.

His efforts to mend the breach kept them talking late into the night, and hed been the one to suggest that his brother rewrite an old poem and change its setting to the fire at the Bazar de la Charité, from which Paris was still reeling. The occasion for the earlier version had been a snippet of conversation a friend of John’s overheard at an art opening in Alexandria. A Greek society lady, the wife of a successful merchant-the friend hadn’t given her name-was gazing at a painting of a setting sun smeared with purples and reds, and leaned on the shoulder of the man beside her, a well-known figure in the Greek community, likewise married—the friend hadn’t given his name, either-and whispered with a heavy sigh: “‘d prefer to set in your arms.” He had found it insipid, the metaphor or allegory, whatever it was, but John laughed and jotted it down. He later wrote a poem about the bombing of Alexandria in 1882 and the conflagration that followed. In the poem, the genteel lady’s words served as an ironic counterpoint to the catastrophe and the vandalism that subsequently swept the city

He spent his life mainly in Alexandria he is ion Durrell book Alendria quartet

I haven’t read a lot of Cavafy;, he has been on my radar for years, so this made me want to learn more about him. We meet Cavafy, his brother John (Ionas), as they spend what in a way is a standard few days wandering around as most tourists do, visiting the sites and some of the grubby sites of Paris, from high art galleries to low-life Brothels, we see the pair, the carefree Cavafy and his slightly more sensible brother. What we have is a man wrestling with the life events around him, both in Paris and in his own country. A boy becoming a man, almost a man becoming a poet, a man discovering his sexual appetite. This is a tale of a man struggling to break free from the conformity of the world he lives in and move to a more modern world. There are some moments of sexual awakening with Cavafy discovering his desires that remind me of the way Joyce described some of his sexual scenes, those little moments of desire.

What time was it now? The conversation tired him. The armchair with the slit was diagonally across from him. How he would have liked to see that wavy hair tumbling down its back, slipping over the brocade fab-ric, to see those eyes, those lips again. But he really needed to get to the point, so he spoke of Moréass library, which while large had seemed to him rather lacking in depth, and about the book by that young writer, Marcel Proust, Anatole France’s protégé, which hed sought in vain, and hearing his voice sound more and more shallow and macabre, he stepped like a sleepwalker into Moréas’s office and approached the gallows of the desk, in the alcove illuminated by a single gas lamp, whose sloped ceiling made it look like a lair. Or perhaps a refuge, though the light was raw and cold … He went closer, then closer still.

I loved to think of a time when Proust was the hip writer on the scene

I liked this book; it is a dreamy tale of a few days in Paris with no real plot in it, more of an overview of a man discovering himself. Maybe a sort of superpowered Bildungsroman in a weekend, what happens when your eyes are open. When you get the chance to be more than you are, the chance to discover through art and experiences new ways of thinking and erotic thoughts. The transition from the Victorian age to the new century, and all that it would mean. This is that time before the dark clouds of World War I, the middle of the Belle Epoque in France, as he discovers this. I enjoyed this book. I feel that if I were more aware of his poetry, I would like to go back and re-read it. Which of her books should I read next? Have you read any others by her?

 

Nobel 2025 is going to László Krasznahorkai

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The Nobel prize for Literature has just been announced and the winner is László Krasznahorkai. The Hungarian writer had been near the top of the betting for the last ten years. His best known book is Satantango, a slowly unwinding book in a backwater village as horror unfurls as a man comes to the town. I have reviewed the book and several other works by László Krasznahorkai over the past year. He is a complex writer whose work encompasses a multitude of ideas and threads, set across various parts of the world. The Nobel Committee said in the quote he was given it for

“for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

He has also made several films with Bela Tarr, based on his book Satantango, including one of them. His last book was Herscht 07769, which I have yet to review.

Nobel Literaure 2025

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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 ?

The Class Reunion by Franz Werfel

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The Class Reunion by Franz Werfel

Austrian fiction

Original title – Der Abituriententag

Translator Bernhard Rest

Source – Review copy

I was kindly sent this book by Eglantyne Books, a small publisher located in the same building as Istros Books. When I was asked if I wanted a copy of this early novella by the Austrian writer Franz Werfel, I said yes. I said yes as he is one of those writers who has been on my too-read list for a long time, in fact, going back to the early days of the blog when I interviewed Peter Stephan Jungk, who had written a biography of Werfel. I was lucky to find an old edition of Songs of Berndette a few years ago, and Penguin has also brought one of his books back into print in recent years. He was on the short list to win the novel prize in 1945, but he unfortunately had a heart attack and died two months before the prize was announced, so he was withdrawn from the list. He, in his time, was good friends with a lot of the outstanding writers of the late 20s and early 30s, Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Robert Musil and the critic Karl Krauxse was a fan of his at the time. The class reunion has been made into a film on a few occasions in both Germany and the Czech Republic. The story follows a weekend in the life of two men.

When Sebastian entered the private room in the Adria Cellar, most of the gentlemen who had resolved upon celebrating the reunion were already present.

A group photo was being passed around, in which an obtuse pyramid of a symmetrically arranged assemblage of youths could be seen. The caption claimed that these young people, who were crouching, sitting and standing in three layers, were the graduates of class Nineteen-Hundred-and-Two of the Imperial-Royal State Gymnasium of Saint Nicholas.

The passage of time had conferred something ridiculous on all the characters in this faded photograph. They either sprouted out of their clothes in long stalks, or they inhabited the outsized suits that housed them like certain cakes that had failed to rise. The most audacious headgear enlivened the rows: rustic hats, sports caps, mariners’ berets. One enterprising head even donned a stiff bowler hat. The indentations that had spoiled the smoothness of that hat in that forgotten hour, made by fingers some twenty-five years ago, could be seen to this day.

At his reunion

The two men at the heart of this book are Judge Ernst Sebastian in the town of Saint Nikolaus, but it is really a thinly veiled version of Prague. Nikolas is the patron saint of the city. He has had a man brought before him for killing several Prostitutes. The two men are left alone as Ernst tries to find out what has happened. But in that instance, he is struck. This man, Franz Adler, was a classmate of his at the private school they went to. The other man, Franz, is beaten down by his life, and it seems to have escaped notice that Earnst is his old school friend. So he cuts the meeting short to continue on Monday. But strangely enough, that weekend he is due to have a school reunion, he talks about Alder with his classmates, but as the evening goes on, we find out more about the Judge’s past. So when he returns on Monday, we will know more of his past, and is this the same Alder he knew?

Oh, how endless and how rich are our boyhood days!

During these endless and rich boyhood days I thought I had forgotten the grave insult that Adler had inflicted on me. That is to say, I no longer thought of it. But deep within my temper, the arrogant words kept on hammering away and grew into a hideous power that longed to be unleashed. This would happen unexpectedly. To this day, it is the same with me: I bear grudges without knowing it. Something that might have been festering in the gloom of my soul for perhaps years will erupt suddenly, surprising myself. And, if I were not a resentful man, would I carry a grudge against myself after all these years?

Weeks passed.

As I already mentioned, when we lined up in our sports lessons I used to stand next to Adler. Already in Vienna I had gained a reputation as a fairly decent gymnast. Here, at Saint Nicholas, which was full of intellectuals and bookworms, I was in a league of my own.

When talking about Adler at the reunion

This book has it all, really. Secrets both in the present and in the past. Identity is the people they seem to be. The memory, how reliable is it at times like this! I can see why it has been made into a film and a tv series in the past. It has a plot that twists here and there, a few things you didn’t expect, as we see behind the mask of those in the upper class and those who have fallen from that class as well. It is also about how we can forget the past until we have a sort of Madeleine moment, when the two men are first left alone, which has a knock-on effect. I was also reminded of an episode of the Tales of the Unexpected Galloping Foxley about a man who sees a man he keeps thinking is his old school Bully Foxley. There is also an air of last year in Marianbad to me, as real events are forgotten or changed in the past, if that makes sense. Anyway, it is a great book to see back in print from a writer who was huge in his day. Have you heard of Werfel or read him ?