Teenaged Ophelia lives on the ark of Anima, where she’s been perfectly happy spending her days attending to the extended family’s museum. She fulfils this particular role on th
‘They call them sculptures because they’re made of marble or iron or wood, but they’re really yarns, brief stories from the past that got stuck in your throat, pills that wou
This collection of stories – strictly speaking essays – by contemporary Belarusian poet and journalist Tania Skarynkina depicts the day-to-day difficulties, absurdities and ple
Pavel Vilikovský clearly enjoys playing with his readers as much as he revels in playing with words. Why else would an author divide a novella up into five themes, each designated
Seven-year-old Shura and his friend are playing at the Leningrad railway yard when a tremendously long freight train chugs past. Countless human eyes peer out through the cracks in
This is a book with three narrative strands. First we have the life story of Enric Marco, as pieced together by Javier Cercas, or rather his authorial alter ego. Marco was the hero
Am I reading a fairy tale? No, this is Munich, November 1918. In the political chaos following the German defeat in WWI, a long-haired theatre critic finds himself in the right pla
Philippe Claudel’s latest novel, elegantly translated by Euan Cameron, tackles friendship, mortality and renewal. A filmmaker loses his best friend to cancer and undertakes a pro
I am the Dark One, – the Widower, – the Unconsoled, The Prince of Aquitaine whose Tower is ruined: My only Star is dead, – and my constellated lute Bears the Blac
The Swedish writer Håkan Nesser, in two separate series, has utilised separate locales. There is the not-quite-Sweden in his novels featuring his mature detective Van Veeteren; bu
