The power of the translator to break nations
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
A Danubian Narnia: Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, reviewed
Mircea Cartarescu likens his native Romania to a Latin American country stranded in eastern Europe. Certainly, his writing delivers not…
The dictator of the dorm: Our Lady of the Nile, by Scholastique Mukasonga, reviewed
In the cloud-capped highlands of Rwanda, even the rain-makers sound like crashing snobs. When two teenage pupils from Our Lady…
Algeria’s War of Independence still leaves festering wounds, two new novels reveal
In France, even the car horns yelled about Algeria. A five-beat klaxon blast — three short, two long — signalled…
In search of Noëlle: Invisible Ink, by Patrick Modiano, reviewed
At some point in his twilit, enigmatic novels of vanished lives and buried memories, Patrick Modiano likes to jolt his…
Full of desperate longing: Unquiet, by Linn Ullmann, reviewed
The scrawny little girl with ‘pipe-cleaner legs’ wants to feel at home with her parents. But father and mother live…
Stockholm syndrome: The Family Clause, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, reviewed
Some faint hearts may sink at the idea of a torrid Swedish family drama peopled with nameless figures identified only…
Foreign fields: Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation
If I had a rouble or a euro for every reader who fulfilled their lockdown promise to devour Dostoevsky, Tolstoy…
Sinister toy story: Little Eyes, by Samanta Schweblin, reviewed
We often hear that science fiction — or ‘speculative’ fiction, as the buffs prefer — can draw premonitory outlines of…
Albanian literary icon Ismail Kadare revisits ‘home’
Ismail Kadare is a kind of lapidary artist who carves meaning and pattern into the rocky mysteries of his native…
Making mischief: J.M. Coetzee’s The Death of Jesus is one almighty tease
Late in this final volume of a tantalising trilogy, we hear that its enigmatic boy hero ‘would never tell you…
A cross between Joyce Grenfell and Frida Kahlo: Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins
In 1971, Tove Jansson paid one of her many visits to London, where 1960s fashion hangovers made the whole city…
In praise of Tove Ditlevsen — the greatest Danish writer you’ve never heard of
Pick up a Penguin Classic from a cult Danish author who ‘struggled with alcohol and drug abuse’ and took her…
Desperate souls: Travellers, by Helon Habila, reviewed
Death by water haunts the stories of Africans in Europe that flow through this fourth novel by Helon Habila. From…
Fun at the EU’s expense: The Capital, by Robert Menasse, reviewed
Stendhal likened politics in literature to a pistol-shot in a concert: crude, but compelling. When that politics largely consists of…
An Igbo Paradise Lost: An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma, reviewed
Nurture hatred in your heart and you will keep ‘an unfed tiger in a house full of children’. A man…
A Lithuanian Romeo and Juliet: Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz, reviewed
It’s hard, in Britain, to imagine a popular museum devoted to a single poem. The Polish city of Wrocław hosts…
The two works of fiction I re-read annually
Long ago, I interviewed Edmund White and found that the photographer assigned to the job was the incomparable Jane Bown…
The Shape of the Ruins, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, reviewed
What makes Colombia remind me of Ireland? It’s not only the soft rain that falls from grey skies on the…
Frankenstein’s monster is more frightening than ever
On the wall of her tumbledown house in central Baghdad, an elderly Christian widow named Elishva has a beloved icon…
Never had it so good: British novelists in the 1980s
In 1990, the BBC’s adaptation of David Lodge’s culture-clash novel Nice Work won an award at a glitzy soirée in…
Navigating a new world
In the 1890s, when British-owned ships carried 70 per cent of all seaborne trade, legislators worried about the proportion of…
Return to the lost city
During a press interview in Bombay about his latest book, the author-narrator of Friend of My Youth feels ‘a surge…
Hot Spring
Imagine if Kathy Lette — or possibly Julie Burchill — had written a feminist, magic-realist saga that sent four women…
On the trail of a lost masterpiece
On 27 May 1939, the German liner St Louis docked in Havana with 937 passengers on board: all but a…
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