Happy New Year, and welcome to January’s Riveting Reviews.
We start the year with our usual eclectic mix of reviews of European books members of our network have been reading in translation over the past few months.
Jennifer Sarha brings us a thoughtful piece about a chillingly prescient book from one of Ukraine’s best-known writers, Oksana Zabuzhko. We’re delighted to have Director of the Network, Rosie Goldsmith contributing a review this month – taking us to Bulgaria and the deeply satirical world of Georgi Gospodinov.
We’re in Poland too, with Ursula Philips, who takes on Władysław Reymont’s mighty tome The Peasants for us, now in a new translation. And Paul Burke is back, this time with reviews of a salutary and very current Turkish two-books-in-one-volume work, and an experimental crime anti-thriller.
Barry Forshaw delights with reviews of three much more conventional crime books – this time Simenons sans Maigret. And finally we have more delight in the form of an Estonian children’s book, reviewed by Darcy Hurford.
Enjoy all these insights into European literature in translation, and if you’d like to review something yourself, do get in touch with us at reviews@eurolitnetwork.com. And if you’d like to buy any of the books we’ve reviewed here, please do so via our Bookshop.org page. The pennies we receive from your purchase honestly help us continue our work.
Until the next time…
West Camel