Book Review: Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri (Nigeria)

This is a 1995 book by the writer of more well-known Booker-winning The Famished Road (which I haven’t read). It’s been praised as a philosophical fable of deep profundity. Unfortunately I found it turgid and hackneyed, albeit blessedly short. I’m willing to accept that I may have missed the point.

“He was eating of the grapes, breathing deeply of the rose-flavoured wind, when a woman came to him out of the moonlight. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he felt her to be of extreme beauty, full in body, rich in sensuality, but obscure. He didn’t know what was obscure about her.”

Evidence that I have failed to recognize its qualities is suggested by the fact that a few years ago the novel was selected by the BBC of one the “100 novels that shaped the world” (in the category of “life, death and other worlds”). It is punishingly abstract though.

The narrator enters a mysterious and mythic world full of beings he can’t see, and is challenged to come to understanding of his experience, and of life itself. The BBC says the main character is “in discussion with wise and challenging beings” but the problem for me is that he isn’t and they aren’t. Apologies for the picture at the top of the post, it’s the closest I could get to a badly rendered immortal being, and it amused me, which I guess is the point of blogging.

Onto the next.

Book Review: The Successor by Ismail Kadare (Albania)

Translated by David Bellos

Following its publication in 2003, The Successor won the first International Booker prize. Set among government circles in the Albanian capital Tirana during the long communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, its events partly mirror the mystery surrounding the real life 1981 death of Albanian Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu. Officially said to have committed suicide, Shehu has always been widely suspected of having been murdered by the state.

Albania was one of the most closed and enigmatic societies in the world, with levels of secrecy and dissimulation not dissimilar to the situation in North Korea now.

In the course of the novel we see the intense paranoia of various characters (or is it paranoia when their fears are so justified?), as they anxiously evaluate whether they have endangered themselves through their associations with the dead premier, ‘The Successor’ of the book’s title. These include his daughter Suzana, whose rapidly terminated engagement to a man with reputed links with the previous regime may have imperilled her family; the architect who inadvertently built a more swishy home for the Successor than that inhabited by the uncompromising President (creepily known throughout only as ‘The Guide’); and the doctor carrying out the Successor’s long-delayed autopsy, who fears he is signing his own death warrant in doing so. Meanwhile, foreign intelligence services are so ignorant of the country that their half-hearted investigations get tangled in knots or stall before the get started.

This was my third book by Kadare, and unambiguous in its criticism of totalitarianism, but lightened (just) by elements of dark humour. Albania is a very different country now of course, but reading the book in 2026 it sounds something of a warning.

Film Review, Katanga: Dance of the Scorpions (Burkina Faso)

In late November last year I went to London’s BFI to watch a 2024 movie, Katanga: Dance of the Scorpions, shot in Burkina Faso, and directed by Dani Kouyaté.

The coup-beleaguered, West African state of Burkina Faso might seems an unlikely hub for the film industry, but for many years it has hosted the Panafrican Film and Television Festival in the capital Ouagadougou, where the movie won the festival’s main prize, the Yennenga Stallion.

Katanga: Dance of the Scorpions is a loose adaptation of Macbeth, with its timeless themes of political ambition, intrigue and the corrupting nature of power enhanced by the decision to film it in entirely black and white. The movie is largely faithful to the arc of Shakespeare’s play, but has a strong African identity, set in a fictional kingdom known as Ganzurgu, with the cast in traditional costume.

Burkina Faso also dropped French, the language of its former colonial power, as its official language in 2023, and the movie was filmed in one of the principal national languages, Mooré, with English subtitles.

The director himself had been expected to be present for a Q&A but unfortunately visa difficulties meant this couldn’t happen. Nevertheless I’m glad I was able to seize the opportunity to see the film in the UK, as showings in the West have been few and far between.

Book Review: The Trial by Franz Kafka (Czech Republic)

Translated by Idris Parry

“Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.”

I’m catching up this month on books read late last year. I’d never read any Kafka before picking up The Trial (secondhand from a book sale at my daughter’s riding centre). But since its publication in 1925 (a year after Kafka’s death) its themes have become so familiar that I felt I knew it well – to describe something as “Kafkaesque” has become part of everyday vocabulary.

In fact, earlier in the year two city traders, who had received long jail sentences after being found guilty of rigging interest rates around the time of the big financial crash, had their convictions overturned at the Supreme Court. The BBC reported one of the men as describing his life since his prosecution as: “a ‘Kafka nightmare’ where he could barely understand the accusations made against him, with no sense of having done anything even vaguely wrong”.

The Trial fascinated me at first, as its protagonist Josef K tries to discover what he has been charged with, and why. His struggles with an opaque system of inefficient and meaningless bureaucracy even resonated with various soul-sapping experiences in my own life. But the unhinged narrative, constantly shifting sands and weird sexual undertones unsettled and ultimately frustrated me – no doubt the point, but it was perhaps over-made – and though it’s not a long novel as it moved towards the inevitable conclusion I couldn’t help wishing it had been a short story.

Book Review: Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Albania)

I read Misinterpretation, longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025, in December. It is a tense novel that examines issues of identity, culture and connectedness. Set in the USA, in New York, at the heart of the story is a young Albanian interpreter, who is married to Billy, an academic, and is negotiating the complexities of her professional and personal life. As an interpreter, her role is to bridge gaps in communication, but this does not prevent her from feeling misunderstood both by her husband and in her working relationships. A trip back to Albania to visit her mother further adds to the tensions: her mother embodies traditional views, and their interactions are loaded with cultural and generational misunderstandings.

Tasked with interpreting for Alfred, a Kosovan who has survived torture, in therapy sessions, our protagonist risks over-identifying with his situation and becoming enmeshed in his life. Moreover, an ill-conceived attempt to intervene directly in the life of a Kurdish poet who is a victim of domestic abuse puts both the protagonist (unnamed, but I really want to call her Ana for some reason), Billy and the victim at risk.

Her unbridled altruism brings her into conflict with her husband, who is (sometimes violently) irritated by her failure to instil and maintain professional boundaries, and ultimately she risks destroying her marriage and her mental health.

I was attracted to the novel by its subject matter, which seemed reminiscent of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies. However, although great on atmosphere, I found the book rather patchy, and not always coherent, and Billy’s temper was pretty repellent.

TBR for January 2026

I have selected a large pile of reading to see me through the first month of 2026, and during January I am planning a deep-dive into Albanian culture, among other reading, to get me back on track with my “reading the world” project.

  1. White Dog fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse: A second-hand book chosen for me for my Christmas present from one of my daughters, set in Botswana, that’s all I know about it!
  2. Venetian Vespers by John Banville: a Christmas present that I’m really looking forward to reading. I’ve cribbed blurb here that reads: “Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri – the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo – newlyweds Evelyn and Laura are met by a series of seemingly otherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn’s already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind?”
  3. Sky Daddy by Kate Folk: another book I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into, a novel about a young woman who is sexually attracted to … aircraft.
  4. The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis: I’m partway through this already, and rationing it to make it last longer, even though it’s a real doorstopper. Semi-autobiographical novel set among privileged and hedonistic teenagers in LA in the earlier 80s, while a serial killer prowls.
  5. Indignity by Lea Ypi: an non-fiction investigation published last year into the life of the author’s grandmother in 20th century Albania.
  6. Crossing by Patjim Statovci: an acclaimed 2019 novel set in Albania, by a Finnish-Kosovan author.
  7. High Albania – A Victorian Traveller’s Balkan Odyssey: a non-fiction historical account.
  8. Mud Sweeter than Honey by Margo Rejmer: a non-fiction book examining the rule of ruthless communist dictator Enver Hoxha in Albania.
  9. The Successor by Ismail Kadare: a novel influenced by the ‘suicide’ of Hoxha’s designated successor, Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu in 1981.
  10. Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare: semi-autobiographical novel based on events in the author’s home town in Albania.
  11. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy: not sure about this one, a modern classic set among Texas ranchers.
  12. The Master by Colm Toibin: a novel based on the life of the writer Henry James.
  13. The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad: a book to inspire writing and journaling.
  14. How to Live an Artful Life: a entry for each day of the year to inspire reflection about art and creativity more generally.
  15. Romancing the Ordinary by Sarah Ban Breathnach: another book aimed at spending some time on self-care and carving out time for oneself. I need to put better boundaries in place around work and family encroaching on precious “me” time and hopefully this book will help.

Book Review: Inside Story by Martin Amis (England)

I have mixed feelings about Martin Amis’s writing. On the one hand, I find it insufferable – smug, sexist, self-congratulatory. On the other, he was a bombastic genius with words, writing surprising, witty and always inventive prose.

Inside Story is close to an autobiography, though Amis archly refers to the book as a novel, with the protagonist a man named Martin Amis, much of whose biographical information seems to match that of the writer Martin Amis (with a few half-hearted name changes).

A large part of the book concerns Amis’s close relationship with the writer, critic and cultural commentator Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011, and who haunts the pages. Amis also deals with the loss of his parents – and persistent fears that his father might have been not arch-philanderer, novelist and critic Kingsley Amis but miserabilist poet Philip Larkin. The book also lingers at length on the character Martin Amis’s affair with the emotionally damaged but never boring Phoebe Phelps, who may or may not be entirely fictional.

Mixing self-indulgence with profundity, I kept turning the pages, and no doubt I will return to Amis’s writing again (though I always think I won’t). This was book 6 of my 20 books of summer.

Book Review: Audition by Katie Kitamura (USA)

I read this short novel by the American author Katie Kitamura last month, before it was longlisted for the Booker. I’d enjoyed her acclaimed 2021 novel Intimacies, about a woman who becomes an interpreter at the international court in The Hague during the trial of an alleged war criminal from an unnamed country (reviewed by me here), and she’s an intriguing author.

Audition is divided into two distinct parts. In the first section a middle-aged actress is appearing in a Manhattan theatre production that is not quite coming together. Against this backdrop, with its associated tensions, she agrees to meet a good-looking young man, Xavier, a virtual stranger, for a meal; he is apparently fascinated by her, and she is acutely aware of how their meeting might appear to an outsider, or to her partner: that it might seem deeply inappropriate, that she might seem predatory. Then the young man suddenly suggests that he might be her son, though that is impossible she asserts, she’s never given birth.

In the second, apparently completely separate part of the novel an alternative reality pans out, as if reflected in a fairground mirror, in which Xavier now becomes part of her family, living with her and her partner as their son. (Whether he really is her son in this reality or instead is living with them as if he were is unclear.) When he brings a girlfriend into the flat, there is instant animosity between the actress and the young woman, and an uncomfortable tilt in the power dynamic of the household occurs. This second section has a chilling, hallucinatory aspect.

The style is a little reminiscent of Rachel Cusk, with the protagonist unnamed, somehow distanced, and Kitamura has a flat, often minimalistic style. Detail is tantalisingly lacking: the actress’s ethnicity is withheld, though it is crucial to the way she’s perceived by others in the story (“How many times had I been told how much it meant to some person or another, seeing someone who looked like me on the stage”). We’re not told what the play in which she’s performing is about. Identities shift disconcertingly, and it becomes difficult to know what is performance and what is reality.

It’s a short novel, and a quick read, which is why it found its way onto my 20 Books of Summer list as a late substitution (at number 5). I’m not surprised it’s been longlisted for the Booker, as it’s tricksy and intelligent, but it left me feeling a bit dissatisfied. The problem is I’m not entirely sure what point Kitamura was trying to make, and I’m not sure that what she has done works.

Book Review: Red Water by Jurica Pavicic (Croatia)

Translated by Matt Robinson

I tend to avoid crime novels and murder mysteries as I find the deaths upsetting, have an irrational hatred of puzzles and find the minutiae of police procedurals tedious. However, this novel was reviewed really positively in the Financial Times and was a recommended ‘book of summer’ in one of the Saturday broadsheets too, so I grabbed a copy to see what all the fuss was about.

Seventeen-year-old Silva goes missing within the first few pages, and the plot seems likely to fit the often misogynistic mould of these things. What’s interesting about this book though is its epic sweep, which takes in the collapse of the communism, the devasting 1990s wars, and Croatia’s subsequent embrace of capitalism and reliance on the tourism industry, even while its focus remains on the impact of Silva’s disappearance for her family and for the inhabitants of her small coastal hometown. Nor are the historical developments simply a colourful backdrop – they inevitably have a devastating impact on the ability of investigators to uncover what has become of Silva, and whether she’s alive or dead.

A proper page-turner, this was book #4 of my #20booksofsummer.

Book Review: The Possession by Annie Ernaux (France)

Published by Fitzcarraldo, and translated by Anna Moschovakis

Nobel Prize Winner Annie Ernaux writes fearlessly about her intimate relationships, stating in the opening to this book that “I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published. To write as if I were about to die – no more judges. Even if it’s an illusion, perhaps, to believe that truth comes only by way of death”.

This book comes in at under 50 pages, so it was a handy choice for my 20 books of summer challenge. It details the half-insane period after the break-up of a sexual relationship during 2001. Ernaux became obsessed with the identity of the woman (an academic) who her ex has taken up with, to extent of trawling online university directories for likely names, and making late night phone calls to the apartment building where she decides she lives. It’s raw, disarmingly candid and strangely gripping. I’m behinf with my reviews as ever – this was book 3 of my #20booksofsummer.