Introduced by Rosie GoldsmithChair of the EBRD Judging Panel and Director of the European Literature Network This week my fellow judges and I proudly announced our Longlist of ten books for the EBRD Literature Prize 2020. Congratulations to all the authors, translators and publishers! The judging pa
‘I’ll send it anyway’, said the publicist when I intimated that Clemens Meyer and I didn’t gel. (I’d DNF’ed All the Lights and have no interest in the sex-trade novel.) Though I had to admit that translator, Katy Derbyshire, had conjured up such an intriguing title for this second collec
This book offers a very intricate, highly precise collage of images, each capturing something about the times we live in. It shows various versions of the discontent and crises that have become the trademark of our era. Each chapter can be read as a short story – at least that was how I started my
Marion Brunet is one of France’s best-known writers for young adults; this is her first novel for a general adult readership, but the issues it raises are very much those of young people – young people pretty much anywhere. What makes it such a compelling read, though, is the setting: Luberon, t
The once-invisible, pseudonymous couple who together comprise ‘Lars Kepler’ are no longer a mystery. After the immense success of their first book, The Hypnotist, the hidden identity of the duo led to massive press speculation and even night-time stakeouts to uncover ‘Kepler’s’ identity. L
An inexplicable pattern of vandalism is happening across the German city of Hamburg. Every night, vehicles are being torched. Is there more to this than simply wanton destruction? And who is behind it? One evening on the eponymous Mexico Street of Simone Buchholz’s tautly written new novel, a Fiat
