Welcome to the last #RivetingReviews of 2018.
We’re taking a break from our monthly reviews in December and January – not because we don’t want to bring you insightful opinion about European literature in translation, but because we have a special selection of material to bring to you over the next couple of months. The Swiss edition of The Riveter – the European Literature Network’s print magazine – will be launched at the British Library on 5 December; so over the next two months, we’ll be posting content from that on our website, including a great bunch of reviews of Swiss literature.
For November’s #RivetingReviews, therefore, we have a bigger collection than usual.
We’re delighted to welcome a new reviewer to the ELNet fold: Barry Forshaw. Barry has been reviewing for newspapers, including the FT and the Guardian, for many years, and is a renowned expert in crime fiction. So we’re delighted that his first two reviews for us are of books by eminent European crime writers: Italy’s Sandrone Dazieri and Sweden’s Hakan Nesser.
We have French crime too, in the form of Fred Vargas’s The Accordionist, this time reviewed by Silvia Sovic.
Lucy Popescu also takes on a French novel – from Philippe Claudel, and Danny Hahn treats us with his review of Christelle Dabos’ YA work, A Winter’s Promise.
We move to Germany for history: Lizzy Siddal discusses the tale of a curious moment in Bavarian politics. Then Jennifer Sarha examines fictionalised history in her review of Javier Cercas’s account of the fall of a Spanish hero.
Finally, Fiona Graham and Ursula Phillips take us east with their astute discussions of Russian, Slovak and Belarusian novels.
Enjoy this winter feast of reviews, and watch out for our Riveting Swiss content during December and January.
By West Camel
If you’d like to contribute a #RivetingReview (and it has to be #Riveting), please read the #RivetingReviews Rules and then get in touch with us via our contact page. Our next deadline is mid-February.