This haunting debut novel opens with the memory of a scene of abuse suffered by a child at the hands of his cruel and violent mother. The reader is immediately plunged into the har
I confess that before this novel came my way, I knew almost nothing of the Nobel prize-winning author Grazia Deledda. Fortunately, this edition comes with an introduction by the tr
In my review for ELNet of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s first two books, Winter in Sokcho and The Pachinko Parlour, I described the author progressing these novels via ‘small misunderst
#RivetingReviews: West Camel reviews WINTER IN SOKCHO and THE PACHINKO PARLOUR by Elisa Shua Dusapin
Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho has been on my reading radar ever since I selected Aneesa Abbas Higgins’ sample translation for publication in The Swiss Riveter in 2018.
Fizzing with wit and energy, Faïza Guène’s coming-of-age novel Men Don’t Cry tells the tale of an Algerian family in modern-day France, spicing up the familiar flashpoints of
Alice Zeniter’s multi-generational family saga is a compelling tale of a family caught in the fallout from France’s ill-fated colonial past. Written in sparkling French prose,
Prize-winning Swiss novelist Roland Buti writes novels that seem at first glance to be charmingly bucolic. Indeed, his most recent novel, Grand National, does take us from the gree
When I began translating, at the end of a long and rewarding career as a teacher of French language and literature, I had a vague notion that translation might give me a way of com
A Girl Called Eel is an unusual take on the coming-of-age novel. In a single sentence, punctuated with commas and paragraph breaks, Ali Zamir tells us the story of Eel’s attempt
‘Her white face had the frozen and inscrutable quality of a mask.’ Kadare’s haunting memoir begins conventionally enough, with a phone call announcing the imminent death of h
