Welcome to the last #RivetingReviews of 2018. We’re taking a break from our monthly reviews in December and January –…

November 2018
Teenaged Ophelia lives on the ark of Anima, where she’s been perfectly happy spending her days attending to the extended…
‘They call them sculptures because they’re made of marble or iron or wood, but they’re really yarns, brief stories from…
This collection of stories – strictly speaking essays – by contemporary Belarusian poet and journalist Tania Skarynkina depicts the day-to-day…
Pavel Vilikovský clearly enjoys playing with his readers as much as he revels in playing with words. Why else would…
Seven-year-old Shura and his friend are playing at the Leningrad railway yard when a tremendously long freight train chugs past.…
This is a book with three narrative strands. First we have the life story of Enric Marco, as pieced together…
Am I reading a fairy tale? No, this is Munich, November 1918. In the political chaos following the German defeat…
Philippe Claudel’s latest novel, elegantly translated by Euan Cameron, tackles friendship, mortality and renewal. A filmmaker loses his best friend…
I am the Dark One, – the Widower, – the Unconsoled, The Prince of Aquitaine whose Tower is ruined: My…
The Swedish writer Håkan Nesser, in two separate series, has utilised separate locales. There is the not-quite-Sweden in his novels…
Deputy Police Commissioner Colomba Caselli is to find that the arrival of a train at Rome’s main station will have…