December 10, 2020 Revolutionary Women from Gallic Books Reviewed by Karen Langley French literature doesn’t lack a wide range of great women writers; the names which spring most readily to mind are…
December 1, 2020 The Lost and the Damned by Olivier Norek Translated by Nick Caistor Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel by Olivier Norek to be translated into English. It was first…
November 10, 2020 Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth How do you feel about the prospect of someone having sex with their grandfather? And…
October 22, 2020 The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante Translated by Anne Goldstein Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Adolescence can be brutal, and in The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante brings it out…
October 22, 2020 One Billion Years to the End of the World by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Reviewed by Karen Langley Science fiction writing often gets a bad press; dismissed as lightweight genre writing, mocked for…
October 6, 2020 Daughters by Lucy Fricke Translated from the German by Sinéad Crowe Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff In the Translator’s Note at the end of Daughters, Sinéad Crowe writes of…
September 29, 2020 The Madness by Narcís Oller Translated from the Catalan by Douglas Suttle Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff Joining the ranks of small presses dedicated to one particular region or language,…
September 22, 2020 Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store…
September 21, 2020 Journey through a Tragicomic Century: The Absurd Life of Hasso Grabner by Francis Nenik Translated by Katy Derbyshire Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff This September sees the launch of V&Q Books, a brand-new publishing imprint with the mission of…
September 17, 2020 People From My Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami Translated by Ted Goossen Review by Anna Hollingsworth With Hiromi Kawakami, you don’t know what to expect other than that her writing will be…
August 20, 2020 My Summer Reading: The Manual of Darkness by Enrique de Hériz Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel Members of the Shiny reviewing team share previously published books from their shelves that they’re reading this…
July 30, 2020 Rolling Fields by David Trueba Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery Reviewed by Michael Eaude Too often, reviews are distorted because they are written by someone who knows and…
July 7, 2020 The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories by Joseph Roth Review by Eleanor Updegraff Translated by Ruth Martin Austrian author Joseph Roth is best known – if indeed he is known at all –…
June 30, 2020 Chitambo by Hagar Olsson Translated by Sarah Death Reviewed by Karen Langley When we think of Nordic fiction nowadays, we’re probably inevitably aware of the preponderance of Scandi-crime;…
June 30, 2020 Crisis by Karin Boye Translated by Amanda Doxtater Reviewed by Karen Langley When we think of Nordic fiction nowadays, we’re probably inevitably aware of the preponderance of Scandi-crime;…
June 23, 2020 I Remember by Georges Perec Introduced, Translated, Annotated, Edited and Indexed by Philip Terry and David Bellos Reviewed by Karen Langley Regular readers of Shiny New Books may recall…
June 18, 2020 The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo Translated by Yumiko Yamazaki Review by Terence Jagger This Japanese detective thriller is set in the 1940s and so is relatively ‘modern’, but only…
June 4, 2020 The Great Homecoming by Anna Kim Translated by Jamie Lee Searle Review by Eleanor Updegraff Ever since Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize…
June 2, 2020 The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Back in 1977, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room was published. On the cover was the bold (and…
May 19, 2020 Diary Of A Foreigner In Paris, by Curzio Malaparte Translated by Stephen Twilley Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies An adjective frequently applied to Curzio Malaparte is ‘colourful’. To the Cambridge dictionary it means ‘vivid,…
May 7, 2020 The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting Translated by Deborah Dawkin Review by Harriet Lars Mytting, a Norwegian author, has had great acclaim for his two previous books – the non-fiction…
April 16, 2020 A Long Way Off by Pascal Garnier Translated by Emily Boyce Reviewed by Annabel For the past eight years, Gallic Books have been translating and publishing the gloriously black-humored noir novellas…
April 14, 2020 The Birds They Sang: Birds and People in Life and Art by Stanisław Łubieński Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston Review by Peter Reason Stanisław Łubieński first began observing birds in childhood through Soviet binoculars. Later, he took…
March 12, 2020 Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins Review by David Hebblethwaite Winter in Sokcho is a first in several senses: the debut novel by French-Korean writer…
February 20, 2020 Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini Translated by J. Ockenden Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Who could resist the title of this Italian bestseller? A black comedy about a hermit in…