Nobel Prize-winning Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times, newly reissued by Fitzcarraldo, takes place in eastern Poland in the fictional village of Primeval and chronicles the lives of its inhabitants from 1914 to the 1980s. Despite being bound by two rivers and guarded by four angels, the vi
It would not be wholly outlandish for the youthful Italian author Claudia Petrucci to lay claim to developing a fresh sub-genre of modern novel-writing. Calling her latest work The Perfect Circle a Rubik’s Cube of a book would be neither an insult nor a tongue-in-cheek putdown. Rather it would be
Lekë Cukali, the narrator of Sarajevo Saga,is an author who arrives in the eponymous city to spend a month there as a writer in residence. We learn later that he has had several residencies in the past, so this is not unusual for him, to spend a month in a foreign country in order to […]
Since his 2005 debut, Cordiali saluti (‘Yours Sincerely’), Andrea Bajani has won some of Italy’s most acclaimed literary prizes. Although his work spans various genres, complex family dynamics remain at its core. The Anniversary only strengthens this focus. Anniversaries usually call for
In 2025, readers of Elle magazine voted Valérie Perrin one of their top ten favourite French authors of all time (as well as being a fashion and lifestyle magazine, Elle has book pages that easily match the FT or Observer for depth and scope). Perrin’s Tata is a sprawling epic focusing on an unma
The eagerly awaited third and final volume of The Country of Others trilogy has just been published in English translation and it’s worth the wait. This final book explores the third generation of the French/Moroccan Belhaj family and brings us right up to the 2020s. We meet familiar characters fr
