Reading and Watching the World: Books, Film and Art
There's a whole world out there! I'm an experienced, UK-based editor and aesthetic dilettante doing an off-duty project to review at least two books, a film and an artist from every country in the world, plus music and TV where possible. Reviews are SPOILER FREE. New posts every week. See Reviews by country for my recommendations and to track my progress.
Translated by Daniel Hahn AFRICA The trouble with reading books from around the world is that there are so many war stories. Sometimes it feels as though every work of translated fiction I read is set in a war zone, past or present. Obviously I recognise the importance of hearing people’s stories and being informed …
Continue reading “Review no 41: José Eduardo Agualusa, A General Theory of Oblivion (Angola)”
Translated from the French by Modupé Bodé-Thomas AFRICA So Long a Letter is an epistolary novel (rare in African literature) and seminal African feminist work that laments injustices in the female experience in Senegal. The book was published in French in 1979, and first appeared in English in 1981. It has been judged to be …
Translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright NORTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA This is a strange book with an excellent title, winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014 and shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker international prize. (I often wonder what prompts a particular book to be translated into English, …
Continue reading “Review no 31: Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq)”
Sexually adventurous, ditzy, Weimar-era heroine Doris has quite the adventures in 1930s Berlin.
FAR EAST, SOUTH ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith When it came to choosing a female South Korean writer, there was really no choice to be made. Han Kang is a previous winner of the Man Booker International Prize, and two of her novels recently made it onto the top 5 …
Continue reading “Review no 27: Han Kang, Human Acts (South Korea)”
“Unbelievable!” he exclaimed. “How can a man fall off a sled? It’s not possible, yet you, you managed to do it. I saw you rolling down like a seal’s bladder, and I couldn’t believe my eyes!”
I loved this short, sharp shock of a novel. Think you’re a bad mother? It’s ok, you’re not as bad as Vibeke.
It had to be done – ticking off my Canadian female writer with my take on Margaret Atwood’s blockbusting ‘The Testaments’
AFRICA Translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner I serendipitously found my copy of this book in a secondhand bookshop in Herne Hill, South London, which I’ve found to be an unexpected and excitingly ripe source of obscure works of fiction in translation. The husband – amusingly but perhaps a bit meanly – suggested that …
Continue reading “Review no 21: Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile (Rwanda)”
Gripping and informative memoir of growing up during and after Iran’s Islamic Revolution. It’s accessible graphic novel format, and engaging and often very funny narrator make this required reading. Five star brilliance.
