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…
November 21, 2019 The Measure of a Man by Marco Malvaldi Review by Terence Jagger I was intrigued to see this novel on my doormat: Malvaldi is better known (to me at least) as a…
November 21, 2019 Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong Translated by Natascha Bruce Review by David Hebblethwaite Ho Sok Fong is a Malaysian writer whose short stories have won a number of awards. Lake…
August 22, 2019 The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun by Sébastien Japrisot Translated by Helen Weaver Review by Annabel I had never heard of Sébastien Japrisot before reading this book, and afterwards, I wasn’t surprised to…
August 15, 2019 One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan Translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan Review by Anna Hollingsworth An author hardly tops any lists of most hazardous jobs, but looking at…
July 30, 2019 A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio Translated by Ann Goldstein Review by Gill Davies It is 1975, somewhere in the south of Italy. A thirteen year old girl drags a…
July 9, 2019 Red Circle Authors: An unusual and innovative venture By Karen Langley Japanese literature has a long and rich heritage stretching from early works like The Pillow Book (990s) and The Tale of…
July 9, 2019 Tragedy, Farce and the Future: the Red Circle Minis Review by Karen Langley As I’ve explained in my Bookbuzz feature, the Red Circle Minis are three slim volumes of original writing published by…
