‘A silent commotion’

A review of Open City by Teju Cole In Teju Cole’s Open City, a young man walks the streets of New York. Julius is a psychiatrist, born and raised in Nigeria, and later educated in the USA; following the death of his father and the return of his German mother to the country of her

‘New-York is but a gullet’

A review of Golden Hill by Francis Spufford Admittedly, Golden Hill will not be for everyone. Yet what the critics have deemed ‘the best 18th-century novel since the 18th century’ is indeed that very thing, and highly recommended for anyone wanting to read something a little bit different. Francis Spufford’s masterful work of fiction revels

‘Those who leave can never return’

A review of A Light Still Burns by Selim Özdoğan, translated by Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire It certainly isn’t the flashiest of series, but it is precisely because it doesn’t shout about its own merits that Selim Özdoğan’s Anatolian Blues trilogy has been such a delight to read over the past three years. This

‘Wisdom resides in those who have wintered’

A review of Wintering by Katherine May Wintering, Katherine May tells us in the prologue to her book of the same name, is ‘a season in the cold […] a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world.’ It is, she says, whatever the cause – in her case, a hospitalised husband,

‘Hell was inside me’ [book review]

A review of Other People’s Beds by Anna Punsoda, translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem With Other People’s Beds, her first work of fiction, Catalan author Anna Punsoda offers us a tale of the body. In the smarting, spiky prose of her first-person narrative voice, she explores what it is to exist physically

‘Making up a story felt like a plaster’ [book review]

A review of Auē by Becky Manawatu In the glossary at the end of Becky Manawatu’s searing debut, the Māori word ‘auē’ is defined as an ‘interjection showing distress’, or as a verb: ‘to cry, wail, howl’. As a title, it couldn’t be more perfect: Auē is indeed a howl of a novel, a long

‘Debating race and wrong’ [book review]

A review of Identitti by Mithu Sanyal, translated from the German by Alta L. Price ‘Nowadays nobody’s a serious intellectual until they’ve sat in the eye of a shitstorm.’ So says Nivedita, a German-Polish-Indian student and influential blogger who writes about race, identity and post-colonial studies under the name of Identitti in Mithu Sanyal’s novel

‘We are the shelter we seek out in others’ [book review]

A review of Homesick by Jennifer Croft Homesick opens with a tornado warning. In their family home in Oklahoma, sisters Amy and Zoe shelter in the pantry, nestled among supplies with a torch and selected toys, waiting until the storm has passed and their parents come to fetch them. The girls do this so often,

‘Crossing languages and collecting butterflies’ [book review]

Putin’s Postbox by Marcel Beyer, translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire German writer Marcel Beyer is a man of many talents. For the past three decades he has been publishing poetry, fiction and essays, translating poetry by Gertrude Stein and Michael Hofmann, and helping to shape the German-speaking literary scene in his roles as

‘Translation is amazing’ [book review]

Catching Fire: A Translation Diary by Daniel Hahn Translation is an art quite unlike anything else. For those who work in the field – and probably some who don’t – it is an endless source of fascination, frustration, and a particular kind of delight. Put a group of literary translators together in a room and