The Questionnaire by Jirí Gruša

The Questionnaire  by Jirí Gruša

Czech fiction

Original title – Dotazník

Translator – Peter Kussi

Source – Personal copy

I draw this first Czech lit month to an end with a classic one of the writers that stayed in Czechoslovakia and he had been working in the philosophy department in Prague and writing for a number of periodicals in Czech. But his writing came to the attention of the authorities. He wrote this book in 1974 and it was one of those book =s that in the day was handtyped and passed around an underground book there was 19 copies circulated. He was arrested and sent to jail for two months after worldwide protests at his arrest he then lived in Germany. After the fall of communism he worked for the government in foreign affairs as the ambassador to Germany for Havel’s government when died  Havel called him one of the few be close to I’m he deeply respected him. This is his best-known book as one man fills in an employee questionnaire and has the words on the top of the form DO NOT CROSS OUT.

1. GRANIT 01
On September 19, 197—, in the city of Prague (i.e., right here, not in the town of Chlumec), I visited the enterprise GRANIT, the sixteenth organization I had contacted over the past two years, and I received my sixteenth Questionnaire (in room 102, second floor), from
the hand of Comr. Pavlenda (Comr. = Comrade; i.e.,
friend, mate, companion, fellow member of a Communist society ).
In contrast to those previous questionnaires, this one was marked in the upper-right-hand corner, in blue pencil, most probably by Comr. Pavlenda himself: DO NOT CROSS OUT!—an exhortation

The opening and that command not to cross out thee questionnaire.

Jan Kepka is the man filling in the questionnaire. What follows is one of the most surreal works Kepka talks about around his family history is mother events during the war when a former Raf pilot during the war is a prisoner in the fifties. we see his family in the Czech countryside as he uses nature at times to explain the world around him. Our narrator Jan he is a garden designer and is applying for this job at Grant a low-level job as an Ensign this form he is given by the official Pavlenda. but the form is a stream-of-consciousness piece that drifts around events that happened like the 1968 uprising he uses his family history and past events to point out what is happening now from Nazis to communists it is kicking off regimes of how people are dehumanised. Jan tries to point out the pointlessness of the world. Surreal Twisting is a book that maybe needs a closer reading than I am as a reader. There are a lot of things like animals and insects recurring motifs that have a deeper meaning and maybe more of a meaning if you were sat in the dark in Prague reading the samizdat type copy of this book means more then. As we enter a series of questions answers twist and turn as our narrator digressions on the answers.

But the simple act of sliding the shoe-polish box to the window provided a definite basis for calculating the degree of Aryanism, according to Section A, para. 1, of government directive 156/40 (Regierungsverordnung).
The situation at the time was thus as follows:
a) Pater Stach was changing his cassock.
b) Jan Baptist Vachal, lodged in a small room in the chancery, was feeling much better in spite of having been told that he had lost a great deal of blood.
c) Prince Friedrich had passed the Anchor Inn on Jost Square, and was approaching St. Mary’s statue.
d) Kaspar Trubac was standing in front of his boarded-up store, trying to look as if the store was someone else’s property.
e) Alzbeta was peering through many human, and soon also equine, legs.

One of the many list and here in the war years

This is a clever book that points out the faults in the regime he was living under at the time but in that clever way that it isn’t direct but twisted and turns around to the point it is a surreal work and mixes history and the present the complex history of the Czech Republic during and after the war. This like the earlier book Golden Age I reviewed showcases the surreal nature of Czech writing during the 20th century. Thus this book has little plot and is sometimes more like a straight family history but is it. As I said it is maybe a book that needs a real close reading to dig deeper into it in fact it would have made a great group read for this month as it is a complex book about family, loss, Czech life and well not crossing out on the form !!. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – B I felt I maybe needed to read this a few times to fully get the book it has so many twists and turns in it rich wordplay.

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Valentino

Translator – Avril Bardoni

Source – Personal copy

Well, I had intended to post a Czech book today, but do you ever have that situation where you read a book and want to straight away read it again well I had that yesterday. I usually have a coffee and sit and read an hour before work after dropping Amanda off at work. Yesterday I decided to take this having just written up the books I got from Holiday and I felt this was a perfect choice at 60 pages there was a good chance I would finish it in one sitting. I have read The Little Virtues and Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg before so I pick this uo when I was away and was just blown away by it.

My sister had never believed that Valentino was destined to become a man of consequence. She couldn’t stand him and pulled a face every time his name was mentioned, remembering all the money my father spent on his education while she was forced to type addresses. Because of this, my mother had never told her about the skiing outfit and whenever my sister came to our house one of us had to rush to his room and make sure that these clothes and any other new things that he had bought for himself were out of sight.

Early on she reveals her sisters view on her brother.

The book follows a number of years in a poor middle-class family we have Caterina one of the sisters to Valentino he is the apple of the eye of the family his mother and father have saved to get him an education as a doctor. His father had been a schoolteacher; later, this is also the job Caterina and the mother help out with piano lessons. So when he is treasured by his parents, but as his sister describes him he is maybe a little lazy at his studies Valentino announces out of the blue he has a fiancé and they are marrying the family thinks he will turn up with some Beauty also when this plain older woman with her tortoiseshell glasses turn upon the family don’t know what to do. They say the father’s heart is weak so Mother talks to them as they wonder why Valentino has picked Maddalena as his wife she has land and money but she is so different to who they pictured their precious son marrying. They do marry and the book then goes forward through the years and have children then a cousin of Maddalean turns up Kit a tall balding man who captures the eye of our narrator but will the couple stick together what is going on between Kit and Valentino.

‘He’s gone home to bed. Here are your gloves,’ I said and tossed them to him. ‘But aren’t you a bit past Mysteries of the Black Jungle?’
‘Stop talking like a schoolmistress,” he replied.
‘I am a schoolmistress,’ I said.
‘I know; but you needn’t talk like one to me?’ My supper had been left on a side table in the sitting room and I sat down to eat. Valentino went on reading.
When I had finished my meal I sat on the settee next to him. I put my hand on his head. He frowned and muttered something under his breath without raising his eyes from the book.

I laughed when he said the schoolmistress line to his sister.

This is a lifetime in 60 pages the course of a marriage the dreams of one generation to the next one. They want Valentino as the father says to be a man of consequence but he is far from that  This is all told in a dry tone by the narrator and there is a sense she knows her brother isn’t as great as the parents feel he is or could be. It is also about class and the difference between Maddalena, her cousin Kit, and the in-laws. Such as when they marry straight away to replace the furniture in the lounge. The book sees the parents die rather quickly after one another. The other sister struggles with her children and our narrator the spinster sister. I loved this slice of a family’s life. Caterina then lives with her brother after the los of her parents and there is a line where Valentino turns to her and says you sound like a schoolteacher she says I am a schoolteacher reminds me of my own gran who was a headmistress. it is fair to say I will be getting the other Ginzburg from Daunt books or seeing if my library has any. But for Italian fiction, my best book is  NYRB classics that Ginzburg rated Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morrante is an epic book. Have you read books by Ginzburg or Morrante?

Winston score – A small gem of a book seems much more than its slim size.

 

Holiday books Northumberland 2023

Amanda and I headed for a week in Northumberland this is there fifth year we have spent time there, and this time we decided we would have a change next year, but we still had a great time. I brought lots of books as ever, with both Barter books and the Accidental bookshop in Alnwick and a reasonable-sized Waterstones in Morpeth I got an excellent selection. Apart from Books, we had a day in North Berwick where we visited the excellent STEAMPUNK cafe, a roastery and fair trade cafe worth a visit sat out in the garden outside in the sun was beautiful that day the lifeboat station was open, and we had a look =around and chatted to a lifeboat man that was servicing the boat. This for Amanda was a highlight as he said he had been on an episode of Saving Lives at Sea a show Amanda loves to watch and we do like to visit the RNLI shops around the country are fridge is a testament to that with a number of magnets from shops around the country. . My highlight was the short ride on the Aln Valley railway it was on an old city train, not the steam train, but it was great to go along the old line that has been partly rebuilt from Alnwick towards Alnmouth, of course. This went on to what is Barter books which was the station, and on towards Rothbury I have seen a film of this railway working when I worked in Northumberland we had a video of the fifties that we showed at the day centre and the people I looked after used say oh that is so and so and know a lot of the people of the film that was one the rail trip to Rothbury and then filming in Alnwick Town centre. We also flew a Kite on the beach which was fun and took me back to being a kid. Anyway I have three pictures of books I got the first two are from the two shops in Alnwick then from Waterstones in Morpeth.

First of is, these all from Barter books I have read one book from George Sand, and this grabbed my eye as it was a Pushkin press edition and a perfect pocket book to read when out and about. Then a book from Choukitsu Kurumatani, a Japanese writer I hadn’t heard of, but this story of a man who is living like a drone but then flies to the city and finds a job and the underbelly of Japan, living between a madam and a Tattoo artist. Then a Prix Goncourt winner. I have often flirted with the idea of reading all the Goncourt winners but some of the older ones are hard to get or very expensive this is about a lover of Brecht. Then a Mexican novel with undertones in 1920 Mexico City of things happening elsewhere in the world. Then eastBound from Maylis de Kerangal and writer I have reviewed a couple of times this is set on a train. Then a novel from one of Angola’s most respected writers, the tale of a man born in prison I am hoping to feature a lot of fiction from Africa as I feel I have not read a lot but I also to start talking about areas and styles of writing from around Africa to start changing my own view of the books I have read and will read to more the country, location and language.

I used to get sent Fitzcarraldo’s books, but I have maybe not reviewed them on time so I haven’t been getting them I am buying the ones that appeal, and Macunima is one of those. Then oine from the recent series of novels from Pushin Press from Japan, this one is meant to be quite horrific, and I need a few for January in Japan. Then a sort of novella by Nataile GInzburg I have partly read this, and her writing is so readable you get drawn into this tale of a son that is a bit of a layabout, These came from Accidental bookshop. The other two are Dutch novels I have yet to read Mulisch’s discovery of heaven but felt this may be a short intro to his writing.  Another book that is on the ten best Dutch novels of all time Out of mind. I miss Iris Dutch’s book week from many years ago. I wanted to read this book when I saw the list of the ten best Dutch novels many years ago. Although I think two are still not available in English the Office and Public Works in there English title lets hope one day we got the Reve a few years ago.

Then, just three from Waterstones in Morpeth I recently got the My Friend Maigret in the pocket cloth books from Penguin and decided the next would be Italo Calvino’s Cosmiccomics, another pocket book to read when out and about. Then a book from Elie  Wiesel, and I liked a couple of books from him I have read. The last book is one both Amanda and I picked as she likes the sound of this Japanese book, and I love these lighter books as they just are a break from anything too heavy when reading. Plus, another choice for January in Japan. I didn’t do as bad as ever; I went for less-known books to add to my TBR . I will be back with a review on Thursday.

 

Summer of Caprice by Vladislav Vančura

Summer of Caprice by Vladislav Vančura

Czech Lit

Original title – Rozmarné léto

Translator – Mark Corner

Source – Personal copy

I move on to the third book for Czech Lit Month and to one of the best-known writers from the first half of the 20th Century, Vladislav Vančura. He was firstly a doctor, then started writing short stories in the twenties and then a novel and several novels. He also wrote plays and film scripts. He is best known for his novel Marketa Lazarova, a book I hope to review this month as well. His fourth novel was made into a film in the sixties by the same director who closely observed trains. I have tried to find it online, but it seems to be on a dvd collection from a number of years ago. Have you watched the film? He sadly lost his life at the hands of the Nazis in the second world war.

OF MATTERS CONTEMPORARY AND A PRIEST
At this moment Canon Gruntley, who held the moral life in higher esteem than any other man, appeared on the embankment bordering the other side of the river. While he was reciting some poem or prayer appropriate to the hour of day, time granted him the opportunity to peek in all directions. In this particular location it was not difficult to set eyes upon the master of bathing ceremonies, Antony Hussey, his tongue protruding from his lips and his moist eyes fastened upon a small glass.

The cannon lives by the river near where Anthony works as a pool superviser by the pool near the river.

This a short book that seems to capture a small town in the Czech hinterlands is told in vignettes that follow a group of characters in Little  Karlsbad when one June, a mysterious Magician and his assistant girlfriend upset the daily c=going on in this sleepy village. Anthony Hussey looks after the pool near the river, and his wife, the cannon, and a Major are all in this sleepy village as we see them going around their everyday lives when Ernest and Anna turn up. They perform, and odd things Happen: Anthony and  Anna are caught together. The Cannon wants to talk to the Magician about his act. The events are left open and we have to fill in gaps between the vignettes of what has happened. This is a clever little book, as it seems epic in its own small scale. One of those books that take time to digest and seem so much more than the mere seventy pages this is.

 

“I’ve been all over the place,” replied the magician with a touch of uncertainty, “but if there’s a lot of talk about someone, it probably isn’t about me! I turned up at nine o’clock with our waggon. We have established ourselves in the square. From there, having spent a few moments in the office of a gentleman who acts as police constable, I came to this riverside resort. However, if there is some swindler here passing himself off as a magician, then I will have no alternative but to leave, without arranging any performance and without taking the waters.”
“There’s no need for impatience,” responded the lady.
“Who’s been saying such things? You are with us now and this is where you will be staying.

When they meet Ernest they have some quqestions about who he is is he a magician.

People turning up out of the blue is a clever framing device. I think of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance, which sees a circus turn up and upset a village. Here, it is more subtle. This is a sleepy village with underlying issues between the main characters as we see the inner workings of the three characters and their families. But if you read between the lines of what you are told.in the vignettes. The village initially reminds me of the sort of village Agatha Christie would describe as the peace of the interwar years. This is a subtle tale of three characters as we see their world shift when a couple arrive. This is a story told in fifty clips. The little polaroids of what happens let you, the reader, try and fill the gaps in that way; it is hard to think this book is nearly 100 years old and, in many ways, is very cutting edge in style. If Laszlo Kraznahorkai would write a twee village novel, this would be it. It is a hard book as it has little action. But there is also some village humour at times as we see a sleepy village where these caught may know this is it for them.  It is glimpses glances at the village over the three days in June as an outsider appears to them. Have you read this book?

Winston score – A – An unusual book from one of the great Czech writers.

The Living and the rest by José Eduardo Agualusa

 

The living and the rest by José Eduardo Agualusa

Angolan fiction

Original title –Os Vivos e os Outros

Translator – Daniel Hahn

Source – Review copy

I decided as the last Czech book for Czech Lit Month was a piece of magic realism, it would be fun to have another very different piece of Magic realism from Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualasa, a writer I have featured twice before on the blog and a writer I love to read he has such a rich imagination and this book sabout a group of writers that end up getting cut off on an island after a storm just appealed and as. The last book had an island in it. The two seemed good to review together. Agualasa has been on the Booker international list, so that was another reason I wanted to read this as he is a writer who could end up again on the list, and I am sure he must be near the top of some Nobel lists; it wouldn’t be a shock to me for him to win in the next decade.

-My character, Jude, is a brutally self-centred guy, narcis. sistic, machista, and misogynist.”
“You aren’t afraid readers will mix the two of you up?”
“You think I’m a jerk?”
Daniel laughs nervously.
“The narrator of this book has your name, he’s a writer.”
“I like exploring the possibility of being someone else, someone unlike me, while still being myself. I like confusing
readers, too.”
The conversation continues. Jude talks about the new wave of African writers, who are more concerned with being writers than with seeming African. He talks about cosmopolitanism, localism and identity. Finally Daniel asks the audience if they have any questions. One girl raises her hand.

I agree with new African writers changiong how we view lit from Africa

As I said, the book follows seven days after a cyclone hits an island on the eve of its first Literary festival and the group of writers that had arrived early are cut off, not knowing what has happened to the mainland and unable to contact the outside world this is the framing device but what follows isn’t so much as the survival story but how a group of writers let their imaginations go wild. Even though they all seem to be African writers that had got their early from Angola, Mozambique and Nigeria there is a feeling that you may know some of these writers they are well-known writers not quite painted enough you can say oh that is Okri or so on but yes you feel as thou they are writers you have read well I do and the in-jokes about how African lit is viewed in the rest of the world ( I often feel guilty of this I must try and separate out writing as every country has a style of its own etc etc you know I am planning in the last few months of this year to add a few more titles from Africa) anyway there is a sense of them knowing each other a sense of being in the circuit together at book fairs, festival etc. But as they days go on some of them see the lines between reality and dreams and the works blurring as they days go by Have they lived or are they in limbo what happens when a group of imaginative writers is cut off and have no sense of the outside world around them? well, you find out here

.Jude smiles, amused at her distress. He tells her he spent years wearing shoes with platform soles. He had them custom-made, at an old cobbler’s in Lagos, who managed very skilfully to disguise their height. Whenever conference organisers asked him if he preferred to speak standing up, at a lectern, or sitting down, he always went for the second option. He also preferred being photographed sitting down. It took him years to get over his complex.
“You’re really not as short as all that,” says Luzia. “I’m serious

This made me smile just as I thought of a famous actor very small that has shoes that make him taller.

This is the second book in recent years that has used a literary festival as a framing device for the story, but they go in different ways after that the other was Pola Olioixarac Mona. But this has more in common with a book like Lord of the flies except this is what happens when a bunch of writers with great imaginations are cut off and left to live without the everyday essential of internet phones contact with the outside world what happens when the mind drifts between the real and the uin=real between life and death what happened after the storm. This is a book that blurs those lines I was reminded of some of Antonio Lobo Antunes’s book The return of the Carvals that saw the orignal the great figures of Portugeese exploration reappear in Lisbon. But here we see the myths and legions of these writers growing over the day. An clever piece of magic realism that shows the power of the imaginagtion and how we can sometimes forget we are alive when there is. no one to tell you have survived something. Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – B soild book from a great writer I think it may have a chance of the booker longlist

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz

Czech Literature

Original title –Zlatý věk

Translator – Andrew Oakland

Source – Personal copy

Well, I’m back after my holiday refreshed and on to the second book for Czech Lit month and it is another from the Dalkey Archive Czech lit series. This is from the Czech Magic realist writer Michal Ajvaz, who is from a family of Russian exiles he has won a number of major prizes in his homeland. He has written essays on Derrida a book-length meditation on Borges and a study on the art of seeing these in ways that can all be seen in this novel of a mystical island a travelogue from a man who ended up on the island and came back.

There is no money on the island, a fact which in the 1960s provoked a French writer of the Left to produce an article which makes a point of describing the island’s society as a prototype for selfless brotherhoods of the future. The fallacy at the centre of his thesis is quite laughable: the islanders had not the remotest interest in philanthropy and humanism; indeed, their language possessed no words to give expression to these concepts. While the islanders absolute lack of appreciation for the accumulation of money was estimable and did much to clarify their behaviour, it was also connected with features of their character which were more difficult to take and by which I was often exasperated. Money is nothing but a pile of memory and anticipation by which we unchain ourselves from our given circumstances; the accumulation of money is a form of asceticism which holds back forces so that these may later form new shapes and deeds.

The ideal of the island had gripped others over time.

Our narrator tells of this unnamed island in the middle of the Atlantic. The city Built on the island has a European feel but the island is a community that has grown up to be something else it has its own ways customs and language he describes this and the first part of the book is him recalling g the island in that way like a travelogue but as he moves on his mind wanders and the prose becomes meandering as he becomes more involved in the island the royal family and the way the islanders are the way this world had grown up with a placid laid back way of life it appears on the surface a utopia a magical island but as the book goes on it shows that what at first seems very perfect to our narrator’s eyes the reality of the place settles in as he digresses into the island life opens up and he hears other tales of how they end up on the island.

 

Perhaps, dear reader, you think that as I write my mind is filled with visions of the island, that nothing is important to me except the efforts to fish out of memory clearly-drawn pictures of the landscape of the island.Perhaps you think I consider you a remote figure, unreal or bothersome, a figure that disturbs my dreams and at whose behest I have to demean and exert myself by transferring glowing images into dark, clumsy words, to bind in the manacles of grammar and syntax the free, light motions of the waves, sands, and winds that linger in my memory. Perhaps you think that because of this I hate you, that I consider you the agent of my misfortune, that I sit at my computer keyboard-whose gentle tapping beneath my fingers is transformed into the sounds of gravel underfoot on the scorched paths of the island’s rocks- hatching plans which do you harm, which use language to ensnare.

I loved the way he broke the fourth wall here in the way he is overcome with visions of the island.

This is a book that captures the myth of Atlantis For example there is many an island as a utopia throughout literature around the world perfect place and this is an example pot this but is also a magic realist work so is it a Utopia or just our narrators fever dream a island mirage ?. This is a place that may appear to be perfect. this is a book that drifts initially it is like a travel guide but then we see our narrator start to drift in his writing as he goes from one side story to the next later in the book. Is utopia where they have nothing to do but observe the world around them or is it maybe that makes it more the book is one that is written as thou the writer has lost himself in the book it seems which to me is a huge nod towards Borges a man that loved books labyrinths it is also about how we see the world around us. Have you read this or any of his other books?

Winstons score – =+ Mystery Island is it utopia or a fever dream?

 

Case Closed by Patrik Ouredník

Case Closed by Patrik Ouredník

Czech  fiction

Original title -Ad acta

Translator – Alex Zucker

Source – Personal copy

I decided to do Czech Lit Month partly because of this and a few other books that I have purchased over the last few years from Czech writers but have yet to get to. Patrik Ourenik has written about 20 books. He has also translated many books from Czech to French and the other way around. He emigrated to France initially as a chess consultant and then as an editor and literature head of l’autre Europe He is known for his use of various genres, literary forms and wordplay, and this book is a perfect example of that as it plays with the crime genre and uses a lot of wordplay as we go to Post Communist Prague. A cat and Mouse that maybe is more about the appearance of things than things happening. She could have lifted her skirt, mused Dyk. Just for a second, what harm would it have done her? There was no one else around.

She could have shown me her pussy and I would have told her how to get to the Academy. Maybe she wasn’t wearing panties either.
What harm would it have done her? Third right. Serves her right.
Not that Dyk had anything against beetles. At one point, in the depths of the last century, he had even had a collection of them and gone to the park every Sunday with a pair of tweezers, a pincushion with various sizes of safety pins, and a bottle of ink with a screw-on top. Most of his collection consisted of ground beetles and pine sawyers.

Dyks thoughts after he’d been ask directions worrying but does it meean more!

The book opens with annotations of a chess match, then we meet Viktor Dyk as he is sitting on a bench as is asked for directions from a tourist or a student, but then there are a few unsettling comments after that, and that is how we are launched into this odd crime book well, is it a crime book the other main character is an inspector Lebeda in fact this is like a game of chess as we move on Dyk we find has never really grown close to his son. What we get is a chess game of a crime novel, or is it a crime novel. With a rape of a student, she is a  tourist on her way to an exhibition of Warhol pictures, then a band of gipsies. Also, some graffiti appears on walls with a political nature to them, a mix of satire of the time the book was written just after Czech gained its freedom, two men in a chess-like chase who is who and what is the truth.

.Vilém Lebeda walked down Old Post Office Street and headed for a vegetable stand to buy some tomatoes. A few days earlier, he had decided to take a stab at making his own tomato juice. The rotten tomatoes were carefully tucked away underneath the good ones, an effect of the last revolution; under the old regime they didn’t bother with such formalities. Lebeda bought two kilos of tomatoes from a grumpy man with dirty nails and then went on his way. Two- and four-legged beasts, dubious creatures of various genders and faiths, moved sluggishly through the sunbaked streets. The retirees’ club resided on the ground floor of a nondescript prewar apartment building on Halek Street.

The other main character this passage made me smile the making tomato juice bit.

This is a clever book that plays with the form of a book. You get this as its writer has translated a lot of leading French experimental writers to Czech Queneau, Simon, Beckett and also a number of experimental Czech writers into French. This is a chess match of a book. Each chapter is like a square of prose itself a little gem that, like a game of chess, you never quite see how it is going to end is it even a crime novel yes there is evidence of a crime, but is it there to be solved or is it just about the post soviet period and what happened. All is revealed but is it I loved this it is a playful book that makes you, as the reader, think about thevents as we get other stories and other characters in the short choppy chapters. This is a mix of Noir, hardboiled crime comedy and Prague if Kingsley Amis and Agathe Christie had a bastard love child that had been abandoned at a platform on the Orient Express like Prague, he’d written this book weaned on a diet of chess and his parent’s novels they’d spat this book out. A gem from the Dalkey Archive

Winston score – +A fun and playful book in post-Soviet Prague as a twisted crime novel with two main characters

That was August 2023 on Wintsonsdad

1. Angels of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap
2. Wound by Oksana Vasyakina 
3. Misdunderstanding in Moscow by Simone de Beauvoir
4. The performance by Claudia Petrucci
5. Voices of the lost by Hoda  barakat
6. Rombo by Esther Kinsky
7. The Taiga syndrome by Christina Rivera Garza
8. The missing word Concita de Gregorio
9. The Remains by Margo Glantz
10. A sunday in Ville-de Avary by Dominque Barberis
11. Crimson by Nivaq Korneliussen
12. Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza
13. A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi

Well I started this month with a bang but the last two weeks I just hadn’t blogged I think I just finishing work and now have two weeks off the first fortnight off since this time last year. But I did review thirteen books which is the best I have done in a month this year and shows I am back in a sort of blogging routine the journey this month went from German and some Slovenian Germans and then to Russia and a mother’s ashes going back to Siberia. Then we stay in Russia for a modern classic from a French writer a couple spend time in fifties Moscow. Then a woman has a breakdown and two meet try to fix her in there own ways. Then a series of lost voices in the form of letters from a Lebanese writer tell the refugees stories. Then a number of adults recall the devastating effect of an earthquake when they were kids in Italy. Then a detective uses fairy tales to solve a crime. Then a woman talks about her ex killing her daughters. Then a woman is at her husband’s wake as she drifts back and forth in time to their lives together. Then a pair of sisters in Paris discover something about one of them. Then growing up in Greenland in the LGBT community. We meet an art critic who talks about the art she is involved with and finally, a bookshop in Algiers history is recalled. Well that is 13 books all written by women for Woman in Translation Month I had hope to do more but I maybe should have prepared a little earlier.

Book of the month

Well, I pass as there are quite a few I could think it was such a great month. The first book from Greenland was great these are all worth trying as each is a very individual book.

Non-book events

I have caught two new series Only Murders in the Buildings the third series of this comic crime series that use three characters that do. Crime Podcast this time a well-known actor is found dead and also add to this the addition of Meryl Streep is class she is always amazing in everything she does. Then there was the latest Star Wars series Ahsoka the latest Star Wars spin-off. I’m not sure what I think so far Three episodes in and it is okay but not quite grabbed me there is a feeling of milking the cash cow dry maybe. What do you think ?

Next month

It is the first Czech Lit Month I hope have a review up over the weekend to set the ball rolling and then get four or five more books read and reviewed this month. I am mid-way through a  Maigret and have a couple of books from before Woman in Translation Month to be reviewed. What are your plans for next month ?