The President,s hat by Antoine Laurain

The president’s hat by Antoine Laurain

French literature

Original title – Le chapeau de Mitterrand

Translator Gallic books (the four main characters stories were translated by three translators )

Source – review copy

Antoine Laurain is a Parisian born writer ,he has won a number of prizes and has written four novels .The president’s hat is his first book to be translated into English .

I am dining next to the president of the republic ,Daniel kept repeating to himself ,trying to convince himself that , irrational as it seem ,it was really happening to him .He barely noticed the taste of his first oyster ,so preoccupied was he by his new neighbours .

Daniel is eating when Mitterrand comes into the Brassiere he is in

Well this is a strange one I had picked this up a week earlier in the bookshop when it came out attracted by the cover and also the story as it was set during the eighties .So when I got chance to review it from Gallic books I jumped at the chance .The book follows a hat ,the hat happens to belong too President Mitterrand .The hat goes on an adventure after being left behind by the president in a Parisian restaurant and being picked up by Daniel Mercier ,this dull officer worker is in two minds to take the hat and when he does the hat seems to have some magic effect on him giving him a new air of confidence ,he subsequently loses the hat it then passes through Fanny ,Pierre and Bernhard all are touched or change when the hat comes into their lives .Meanwhile Daniel is trying to regain the hat and regain its powers as he sees it .What is Mitterrand doing about his lost hat ? why didn’t he go back  for it .

The black felt brim acted like a visor ,compressing the space around her and marking out a distinct horizon .In Batigonelles ,a man did a double take as he passed her .What kind of image was she projecting ,walking along in the moonlight in her denim mini-skirt ,high heels ,silver jacket and black hat ?

Fanny finds the hat after Daniel she is a 80’s hip girl in her own words

This book isn’t high French lit ,but it is fun lighter reader  .For me its from that part of the French psyche that produces films like Amelie ,which this book really remind me of that fuzzy warmness I got form that film ,That light-hearted Gallic humour  of misadventures  ,Like the box that Amelie finds the hat is a framing devices and a talisman to all the come in contact with and in some way changes everyone’s life  .In the back of the book is an interview with Antoine Laurain where he said he came up with the idea after losing his own hat and imagining after he had returned to the restaurant and their was no sighting that it had fallen into the hands of a beautiful women .Her choose the 1980’s as he want to go back to a simple period of French life ,Nick Lezard in his Guardian review talks of a new sub genre of  ” pre mobile phone literature” ,I agree in part but part of me thinks that anyone of a certain age in both UK and France looks back at the 80’s as a golden age in a way the last time before the world started to speed up due to so much information and internet . When people still read papers ,houses still had  phones or minitel in Frances case .Even our news seemed different we know who Mitterrand was we saw him on our tv on the news regularly as the world has sped up the last twenty years or viewing of the news has changed so we know less about our French neighbours current leader than we did in the 80’s which is a shame .This book is a fast read I finished it in a little over a night and it was a book that when I put it finally down I was smiling and a little upset that it had finished as I loved the world I had been in between the covers .

Have you read the book ?

What can we read into the food served in the Dinner blog tour

I was asked to join the blog tour,very happy as it was one of my favourite reads last year and a book I feel people should get to know bettr ,anyway I thought a few words on some of the food served during the meal would be fun .I did review The dinner last year and Alan from words of mercury kicked of the tour yesterday any way lets look at the food .

 

The dinner menu

Starter

Crayfish with baby onions dressed in a tarragon vinaigrette

Main course

Fillet of Guinea fowl

wrapped in ultra thin german bacon

on a bed of lettuce

Desert

A parfait of home made chocolate and shaved almonds

and grated walnuts

Topped with our own Blackberries fresh from the garden

*

Starter

Well I look at the crayfish and thought two things about why it might be chosen .One that they are fish that live of clean the water around them and maybe that is a fore warning of what is about to happen in the meal .The other point is there not Lobster smaller and is the maybe a point is this about a small fish in a big world ,one of the brother is a politician and is he maybe a small fish not the big one he thinks he is .

Main course

The main course again has Guinea fowl, which like the crayfish is a smaller version of fowl that one would usually eat and why is the bacon German ? at this point the action round the table is starting to get heat up as the two brothers discuss what their they are there for I do wonder what Dave lamb would say as he saw the four people round the table discussing there sons actions .

Desert

Parfait is a hard dish to make as it takes time and care to master .Strange rather like the decisions the two brothers and the wives are making round the table if one step goes wrong the outcome will be completely wrong .Blackberries from the garden maybe shows that the politician brother needs to get back to the people and maybe have something everyone would eat like Blackberries we’ve picked up ourselves .

Well sure I’m wrong but thought a quick look at the foods the brothers and wives ate during the dinner .

Do you ever wonder about the food mentioned in books you read ?

Fellow blog tour folk

 

Share your thoughts online: @atlanticbooks #thedinner.

26th April Stu Allen:

29th April Tina Hartas:

30th April – Marion McGilvary:

Pedantic Press

1st May David Hebblethwaite:

2nd May Megan Wood:

3rd May Marcia Jarnell:

 

25th April Alan Bowden:

 

tops on the blog tour .

 

To the Islands by Randolph stow

To the Islands by Randolph Stow

Australian fiction

Source – personnel copy

Randolph Stow is one of those writers I feel that time is forgetting I only heard about him a few years ago when this book was considered one of the best Australian novels on the old ABC book show .He won the Miles franklin the year after Patrick white did with Voss in 1958 the second winner of the prize with this book .I looked up and he has been described by one person as the Australian Camus .Anyway he lived in the uk from the mid seventies and died a couple of years ago .This book was revised in 1991 but my copy is the old Australian Penguin version from 1962 .

I am an old man ,an old man .J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j ‘ avais mille ans ,and this cursed .Baudelaire whining in his head like a mosquito ,preaching despair .How does a man grow old who had made no investment in the future ,without wife or child ,without refuge for his heart beyond the work that becomes too much for him ?

Very good bit of existentialist angst here I felt

I read both Kim and Lisa’s review of this book and Knew it was one I would love .SO what is it about well the action is set in worth west western Australia in a Mission that is run by the church (you just know how this is going to go ,don’t you  ) ,this is for the Aboriginals to use (be converted they meant  no matter what the cost  ) anyway the mission is run by Stephen Heriot ,this guy fits you typical missionary view he sees the Aboriginals as people to covert but years in the desolate place has changed him into a twisted man anyway the is a man he has had run in with over the years Rex an aboriginal he has had run in with in the past and he considers evil anyway ,he ends up killing him and Heriot goes on the run  but what happens next ?.

Without bending ,without touching him :”dead” ,said Heriot ,feeling in himself the thickening of blood ,the stiffening and relaxing of fingers . Rex –

The moment the book turns .

Well this book has so many themes it hard to cover them all , Christianity and Aboriginals this isn’t just a Australian thing it can be seen in a wider context of africa and Asia .Heriot a man in crisis is a classic figure of existential fiction a man questioning – What he did ,who he is and why he is ? easy to see why he had been called the Australian Camus .Heriot could easily be a  character from say Camus or Beckett  .then we have ,Culture clash the white folk as they are often called here by the aboriginal as there views on life differ greatly thus cause a build up of tension especially in Heriot  .For me one of the  things I loved was the Language this is something I really loved, Stow’s voice especially the dialogue which to me as an English reader sound very authentic like the “old days  ” Aussie we used to hear in my youth thirty years ago  ,to coin a term ,he used some terms which now seem very out-of-place but were in common usage at the times ,these I believe have been to some extent removed in the revised edition which is shame lisa did not she would like to she what was cut and I will second this myself ,I feel books may date to me this hasn’t te themes at its core are still the same today maybe not in Australia but elsewhere ,the terms are of the time and added for me as a reader .As for him being like Patrick White he is a bit but when he wrote this at just 22 he hadn’t read White’s Voss .

Have you read this ?

A personnel odyssey Anthony Burgess

Well earlier this year I was lucky to be sent these from Vintage books it is six Anthonh Burgess novels that have been reissued by them ,now if you have read this blog over the years I have mentioned him from time to time he is one of my five all time favourite writers .I haven’t reviewed him on blog yet but when these came it finalised a plan I had in the back of my head for a couple of years and that was to read a number of his books in Late November /early December 2013 ,which marks 20th anniversary of Anthony Burgess death for me it was a great loss of one of the most unique and individual writers the English language has eve produced so with my own collection of books here

I have 17 novels of the 34 novels listed on Wikipedia as by him if I add in 4 I have wish listed on Amazon for my new kindle that have been published Serpents tail that means 21 novels plus the autobiography little Wilson and big god to read I have made a start reading eve of st Venus already .Now as I said this is a personnel odyssey for me but all are welcome to join in because to me he has always been much more than the one book Clockwork Orange that most people know him for .so from November watch out as from them til e d of 2013 I intend to review all these books not moving from translation but marking an important figure to me as a reader in my reading life .he marked a real change in my reading Habits when I read him in my late teens and early twenties and I feel now is the time to mark that point in my life and honour this great writer before everyone forgets him .For he wrote dystopic fiction, sci fi fiction ,comedy ,historic fiction and philosophical novels but fat from been the writer that moved genres and never succeed he did in nearly every field he tried .Bot bad for a guy that said he was a musician first and writer second

What is your favourite book by Anthony Burgess ?

Polish lit month update

Hi all I’ve not forgotten this I ve decide to move it back to October .I been busy working and reading the iffp books which include Pawel Huelle’s cold sea stories time has run away from me and I really want this to run smoothly so I ll be contacting translators and starting to post books they like and recommend in next few weeks now the Iffp is nearly over for another year .
What polish fiction do you think you will choose in October ?

Ways of going home by Alejandro Zambra

Ways of going home by Alejandro Zambra

Chilean fiction

Original title Formas de volver a casa,

Translator – Megan McDowell

Source Review copy

I have read him before Kim from reading matters sent me The private lives of trees a couple of years ago ,I read it but never review it so with Spanish lit month  in July I decided to review this now and The private lives of trees .Alejandro Zambra is a Chilean born writer he studied in Chile  a degree in Hispanic languages  ,and currently teaches in Santiago and contributes to magazines and papers in Chile his first novel was describe stunningly as “The publication of Bonsai … marked a kind of bloodletting in Chilean literature. It was said (or argued) that it represented the end of an era, or the beginning of another, in the nation’s letters” in El Mercurio .

THE NIGHT OF THE EARTHQUAKE I WAS SCARED

But I also, in a way enjoyed what was happening .

In the front yard one of the house ,the adults put up two tents for the children to sleep in ,and at first it was chaos because we all want to sleep in the one that looked like an igloo

As I said halves scared /but enjoyed

SO we get to ways of going home it is one of those short novellas that seem much longer and deeper after you have put it down if you know what I mean .It’s a book of memory and halves .The book is in two section we meet a young boy in the dark days of Pinochet’ s regime ,but our narrator has a fairly normal life as it appears to him in fact if anything slightly boring ,but then there is an earthquake and almost like the Shibbolth artwork (the crack in the floor of the turbine hall of Tate modern Doris Salcedo a fellow Latin american ),out of this crack  of the earthquake appears Claudia a slightly older girl than him, we  sense our narrators immediate attraction and liking of this girl as he spies on her from afar but getting closer  ,they get to know one another and she gets him to look at her uncle to she what he is up to.No as quickly as she appears, no sooner  has her and her family disappeared from his life but he never forgets her  ,til they meet in adult life  ,he is full of remorse for the violence of the Pinochet years and how him and his family didn’t do a lot ,Claudia family did that is why she went ,find out how these two getting together changes our narrators life for ever .Also what really happened during those years though unspoken at times is always lurking in the background .

When I was a child I liked the word Blackout .My mother would come and get us and bring us into the living room.”In the past,people didn’t have electricity “, she would say as she lit the candles .It was hard to imagine a world without lamps , without outlets in the wall .

As an adult remembering the past .

I said this is a book of memories our narrator rather like my self ,ok I didn’t have a violent dictatorship ,but had a bad divorce of my parents a step father I didn’t get on with and a being clumsy skin and tall was a target for bullying .But now as I look back on my younger years these events thou there are second place to family holidays ,evening spent with friends ,day trips in fact all the best bits .I feel this is our narrators problem his is the reverse as a child to him it all seemed wonderful he almost blanked out the bad parts ,til they reappeared in adulthood .I also said halves well-being young /being old ,being safe /having to run ,being quiet like the narrators parents / speaking out like Claudia’s  parents ,moving on /not forgetting.Also the shadow of the dark days of being Chilean in the 80’s looms large in the background   .Zambra is a writer of true  style in fact that sparse writing style that yet seems fuller ,like Carver did in his short stories the novella has been worked to a delicate lace of words that thou fragile and thin is truly beautiful .

Have you read Zambra ?

Do you have a favourite Chilean writer ?

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

German fiction

Original title – Das Mushelessen

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – personnel copy brought on Kindle

Birgit Vanderbeke is a German writer ,she lived in Frankfurt growing up and studied German .Before becoming a freelance journalist .She currently lives in southern France .The mussel feast is her best known book and a set text in most German high schools .

This evening of all evenings we’d say we decided to eat mussels.But it really wasn’t like that .Ypu couldn’t call it a coincidence .After the event, of course

The sit to have the mussels what does it mean ?

So the mussel feast is set on one evening a family sit down for the special meal of Mussels to eat .There is a mother son and daughter .The story is being told by the daughter ,all that is missing is the father .As the evening unfolds we see why there having this meal as it is the fathers favourite meal ,the mother really isn’t keen on this meal but happily spends hours scrubbing the mussel’s to the point that her hands start to bleed .This family now in the west had managed to escape the east of German .The family is a strange one the mother is a teacher a nervous women who seeks solace in playing Schubert on the piano .The father has grown up embarrassed of his origins as an illegitimate child this he make the family feel as he tries to mould them in an imagined image of them .The daughter she is the most level head of the family .The son now he gets a lot of dressing down and abuse from the father . So when they sit at 6.00 there is a Erie silence as the father should and always is there ,the bowl of mussel is laying their cooling there to afraid to eat them .The story is virtually poured out as the daughter lets the history of the family and even the bowl the meal is cooked in that came with them from the East to West Germany .The four-hour later a phone rings what’s happened ?

My mother said ,forget the martyrdom ,this is absolute purgatory ,but my father said it helps ,and he laughed at us when we fussed; stop making such a fuss ,he’d say and ,pain is relative that,in fact is true ,because my father had hardly any sensitivity to the sun .

The mother hates the sun but the father seems to think it is a minor point .

Now I love Peirene ,well Meike choices ,this is a classic choice what is amazing is that it has taken 23 years for this book to reach us in English.This still has an impact but at the time would have  been  electrifying  and timely ,yet again showing the importance of people like Meike that champion the smaller books from round Europe ,even thou it is late we still get the glimpse behind the irom curtain  .Now the book its self ,well I know that this is one of those books that has two levels the first is to see it as a family story the story of a family in fear of a father and coping ,surviving come from East to West ,but in some ways regeretting thinks from the east maybe an early example of ostolgia ? .The pther level is what is the father is he more than he seems is he indeed a simple example  for a wider figure in the old east Germany ,the Stasi man (or women ),is the way the family is all in fear of one a wider view of what life was like in East Germany  .Yes the father seems like a repressive regime at times making the whole family bow and bend to his will . Now style wise this is in the classic vein of central european writing that feel of being full on comma after comma ,give an almost breathless feel to the narrative and  add to the feel of the book that makes you feel the tension at the table ,the shadow of this father falls of the page over you as the reader .To the point you worry is he coming back ?

Have you read this book ?

Brief loves that live forever by Andreï Makine

Brief loves that live forever byAndreï Makine

Russian fiction

Original title  Le Livre des brèves amours éternelles,

Translator Geoffrey Strachan

Source Review copy

I ve reviewed Maikne before on the blog twice before the life of an unknown man and Human love  ,so have said a lot about the siberian born russian that has made his home in France and now writes in French .He is also now being published by Maclehose press for the first time .So this is his latest collection I m not sure if its a Novel or a interlocking collection of stories my self .

All young lovers travel this road and all ,in their alarm ,have only one soloution :to put pressure on the limits our poor human bodies impose on us .We doubled the violence of embraces,seeking now the complicty of the sea at night ,now the solitude of water falls in the forest.

Love in the soviet era is grasped at for all it is worth

So as you see on  the cover art, you sense what this book is  about  before you  read this book well the  picture gave me a sense of something being  a  tale of past like the birds that fly away every year but are remembered .This book is at heart russian and about loss and love ,but also moments in life .The life in collection is that of Dimitri Ress ,now on his way out of life .But through these eight chapters / stories ,we glimpse the love in harsh times ,what love is how we view love from a child through growing to becoming an adult .All this is set against a backdrop of 60’s and 70’s Russia .We see the child in an orphanage ,via an older man who has come to see them able to touch the very beginning of communism as this man had met Lenin ,through a holiday affair ,a women visiting a grave in France ,the Afghan war Ress gets injured .The dark grim times I remember of Brezhnev  we saw in the west those news reports of what seemed a very grim place ,here don’t seem so grim at times and shows as ever love can win through rather like Nadas in Parallel stories love and sex or even the whiff of sex is all that remains given communism .The start of the book also remind me of the start of life of an unknown man as it is two men meeting and one telling his life to the other .The women he meets and loves and how he remembers them remind me at times of the lines from the film city slicker where Jack Palance talks about a women he saw but never meet and just the fact that he could she her outline against the sun ,this is how Ress remembers not the whole just the feel of the women .

At the time of our meeting almost thirty years ago ,these were the solemm word I believed were needed to sum up Dimtri Ress’s life:a revolt against a world in which hatred is the rule and love a strange anomaly .And the failure of God whose creation man is called upon to set to rights …

Near the end his friend sums up the man .

Well I love Makine  ,his books always strike a chord with me and this book has the classic hooks of his writing they are soviet russia ,love as in this case not always working out ,the struggle for a better life .Though he lives in France and has as I said before has written other books under an alias that made the French press think there was a new French talent but no it was Makine ,where as his own writing is distinctively Russian ,with a real sense of longing and asking ,but I do always sense hope in his works and ok it doesn’t always work out .I’m not sure how you describe the book a novel or episodic novel but it lingers with you after you’ve put the book down remember like a collection of old sepia photos you’ve just pulled from under your bed and gone through and tell some one Ress memories some how drift into your own .Just wonderful .

Have you read Makine ?

 

Best of the world under 40 in English translation

Best writers under 40 2013 list

~(not British but from round the world )

Well as one would expect the chance of the best of British under forty list coming out today from Granta in the new magazine has been eagerly awaited and discussed .So I decide I try to do a list of writers from round the world that have been published or shortly due to be published in English.This is actually quite a task ,because usually you have to be a acclaimed or won a prize to catch the eye of a editor commissioning  translations ,this means the writers I consider newish to use in english say Santiago Gamboa ,Christoph Simon or Mickhail Shishkin all fall out side the under forty classification .But in the end I have found some wonderful writers from round the world myself and a few suggested by Tony as well .

Winstonsdad rest of the world best writer under 40

Valeria Luiselli

reviewed he début in English Faces in the crowd and have read a follow-up collection of non fiction pieces sidewalks ,she is my new writer crush for sure she loves wandering round like myself .She is definitely one to watch .An interview with her 

Andres Neuman

well short-listed for both  the IFFP and BTBA this year with this novel .Is one thing but the other he is actually considered a great short story writer as well ,we have a lot to come from Andres here is my review and Gary’s interview with him.

Patrico Pron

I first mention Pron when he was one of the writers and other stories was working with in the first year .but he was taken up by Faber who are publishing his first novel in English later this year -“my fathers ghost is climbing in the rain “a writer returns home as  his father is dying .here is a piece he wrote for paris review .

 

Matias Nespolo

He is a another talented Argentinian writer ,his book Seven ways to kill a cat was translated by the wonderful Frank Wynne .Here is a piece from Granta about him 

Daniel Kehlman

Now this is one that shocked me I have yet to read him but his books been on my radar for a good while and shocked he was eligible ,here is a piece he wrote praising  his translator Carol brown Janeway .

Sasa Stansic

Is one of the new breed of German writer to have come to Germany from Eastern Europe in his case Bosnia and start writing in German .Both Rob and Lisa loved this book ,Here is an interview with him from rumpus

Juli Zeh

Juli is another German writer I had on my radar for a while she is among a group of talented female German writers Judith Herrmann and Jenny erphenbeck being other they both just fell outside the under 40 ,here is a review and interview with her tanslator  from Lizzie

Helene Hegemann

Now this is a controversial choice as by this piece in the new york times shows  ,I did like the book it has a strange arc and is quite unique and she is so young here is my review of Axoltl roadkill.

Tristan Garcia

I think we all admired the style and subject of  hate a romance on last year IFFP prize ,Tristan is not just a writer but also a philosopher as this piece shows and here is a review of hate from my blog .

Laurent Binet

Well he missed our IFFP shortlist but this début from him HHhH has set people talking about what makes a novel and also set many heads turning with its stunning cover .here is my review and interview from the new statesman

Roberto Saviano

Yes he is under 40  ,I know Gomorrah his debut has been round for quite a long time ,the best non fiction writer from Italy at the moment here is my review of beauty and the inferno from last year ,and an interview from huff post .

Joumana Hadda

A lebanese poet and writer I first read about online via arablit via this profile  I think ,but n=known for poems and essays on the arab experience I hope to review her soon rather than later .oh and she is just over 40 but want to add a female arabic writer .

Faiza Guene

Another young writer of French Algerian origin she has had two books translated so far to English ,I hope to read her later this year as she has been on wishlist for a good while .she writes about growing up poor in paris her is a piece from the guardian about her 

Ali Bader

Another writer I had on radar since I read a piece on the wonderful Arab lit again(if you’re not following this blog you are missing the chance to find the Arab lit world opened up ).two of his books have been translated in to English .The last was published in 2011 .

Risa Watya

IS a female Japanese writer ,she has women the Kenzaburo Oe prize with her most recent book isn’t it a pity ,which will be coming to us in English soon .I ll thank Tony for this one I not to sure but a nice piece from the official j lit site her about her 

Hitomi Kanehera

A high school drop out  from Japan published her first book age 21 ,best known for Autofiction which I have had from library but never got to ,this is another from Tony .a profile from a few years ago that isn’t behind paywall of ny times .

FFlur Dafydd

A Welsh language writer and singer ,she is best known for a piece for the Seren collection of tales from Mabinogion series from the famous Welsh myth  her is a profile of her from Seren .Thanks again to Tony for this one .

Well there you go I given you a few alternatives from Wales to Japan ,from Algeria to Argentina also I link to three list .

Granta spanish writers list 

Granta best brazilian link

Beirut 39

Though some of these writers haven’t had a full novel published in English it is worth noting them for the future .

 

A brief explanation

Many of you may have noticed yesterday I said I was going move blog and direction well I ll explain why and why from time to time I get upset about three years ago I got a couple of nasty comments on the blog I trashed them since then I have been getting semi regular e mail of what one must say of a rather nasty nature basically implying that a )I am stupid b )this blog isn’t worth my time or readers time and c )I know nothing , and many fat nasty things beside that ,well I used open them think why and just leave it so as has been point out I can be sensitive yes when I ve been u set this pressure I tend to get upset well i have been getting this every week sometimes twice a week fir last three years i ve no idea why this person has taken against me .anyway an e mail came with the line how is winston and not notice it was from someone i didn’t know opened it,well yesterday I’ll not say what was in It but it was bad and made me think that’s it fuck them why should i have to put up with this ,but no why should I back down .I hope that by showing they haven’t won even thou they thought they might have yesterday . I expect they’ll be another mail soon but it will now just be binned unopened .I hope this explains my actions over last few years I feel happy now I have said something .The blog carries on regardless .i just hope I haven’t open floodgates to more abuse but I had to say something people think I m bonkers and I am not .