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A few weeks ago, I found myself having lunch next to the Belgian author David Van Reybrouck. We were in the writers’ room at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, where he had just taken part in a panel discussion on the end of empire, drawing on his Baillie Gifford Prize-shortlisted book Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth […]
Some years ago, my father-in-law gave me a secondhand boxset of facsimile editions of the first ten Penguins, released in 1985 to celebrate the industry giant’s fiftieth anniversary. My TBR pile being what it is, to my shame I only gave it a cursory glance, which showed me that it included works by some of […]
This #WITMonth, it was the translator who attracted me to my featured title. I often find this is the case: now that I’m relatively well versed in how books come into English, there are certain translators’ names that predispose me to try stories. Because I admire other projects they’ve done or know them to be […]
This month, the seventh in my year of reading nothing new, I delved back further than usual. My edition of July’s featured title was published in 2020, but the original came out some considerable time before that, in 1881. The English translation of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is a collaboration between two translators […]
This book was one of two sent to me by Colin. He was going on a trip to Kosovo and volunteered to go to some bookshops on my behalf to see what Kosovan booksellers would choose for me as standout books from their nation. Kosovo wasn’t included in my original year of reading the world. […]
Don’t judge a book by its cover, the saying goes. Frankly, though, if I were assessing Fatou Diome’s The Belly of the Atlantic, translated by Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz, on its appearance, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. The pictures of the figure in the boat and the foot on the ball feel […]
Back in 2012, when I tried to source and read a book from every country in the world, Kuwait was one of the trickier entries on my list. There were very few traditionally published titles available in English translation. I ended up reading a self-published novel by the hit blogger Danderma, which proved an education […]
It’s nearly ten years since I started my Book of the month slot on this blog, after having been blown away by an Italian writer who has since taken the English-speaking world by storm. In another six years, I will have featured more Books of the month than the 197 titles that comprised my original […]
Book publicists are a curious breed. Although I rarely accept proofs and buy almost all the books I feature on this blog, I frequently receive emails from people promoting titles that will clearly be of no interest to me. Mainstream books by British and American writers. Business books. Academic books on subjects outside my area […]