Dear Dickhead by Virginie Despentes
Translated by Frank Wynne Review by Annabel I would never have predicted that Virginie Despentes, creator/director of the 2000 rape-revenge novel and film Baise-moi, author of the superb ‘State of…
Translated by Frank Wynne Review by Annabel I would never have predicted that Virginie Despentes, creator/director of the 2000 rape-revenge novel and film Baise-moi, author of the superb ‘State of…
Translated by David Coward Review by Karen Langley The essay as a form of writing has existed for centuries, and one of its pre-eminent practitioners was the French author Michel…
Translated by Helen Weaver and Leo Raditsa Reviewed by Rob Spence If you were asked to suggest which real-life character was to be played by Woody Harrelson in his next…
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet You know me. Just think, and you’ll remember. The old man who plays those public pianos that you see in various transport hubs….
Translated by Hildegarde Serle Reviewed by Harriet My name is Virginie. I’m the same age as them. Today, out of the three, only Adrian still speaks to me.Nina despises me.As for…
Translated by Lauren Elkin Review by Karen Langley Simone de Beauvoir is probably best recognised nowadays for her ground-breaking feminist work The Second Sex, as well as her connections with…
Translated by Alison Anderson Review by Annabel We’re delighted to be featured in the blog tour for Muriel Barbery’s new novel today – do see the other stops on the…
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2018 I read and reviewed Leïla Slimani’s best-selling, Goncourt-Prize-winning novel Lullaby [here]. Soon afterwards I also read her 2014 Adèle, which…
Translated by Tina Kover Review by Annabel Italian-born novelist Ketty Rouf won France’s Prix du Premier Roman 2020 (First Novel award) for her debut No Touching, written in French and…
Translated by Paul Curtis Daw There’s a scene late in the story where Narcisse is out on day release, wandering the streets of Paris. He’s due to visit his family…
Translated by Melanie Mauthner Review by Dorian Stuber The title of Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile refers to both a statue of a Black Virgin Mary poised precariously…
Translated by Anna Moschovakis Review by Tony Malone David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black takes the reader back to the battlefields of the First World War, but anyone…
Translated by Jessica Moore Reviewed by Annabel Maylis de Kerangal is a novelist whose primary focus is not the characters that people her books, but the subject they’re involved with….
Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Max Dunbar Reviewers of fiction, trying to make sense of Laurent Binet’s Civilisations, have reached for video game metaphors. In the Literary Review, James Womack…
Translated by Steven Rendall Review by Terence Jagger He moved cautiously forward through the tall grass, following a trail of broken stems. And it was there, in a miniscule clearing…
Translated by Ros Schwartz Reviewed by Annabel I have a personal goal to increase diversity in my reading and am glad to have discovered the indie publisher HopeRoad. Founded in…
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 those like George Sand, Colette, and…
Translated by Nick Caistor Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel by Olivier Norek to be translated into English. It was first published in France in 2013 and…
Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the…
Introduced, Translated, Annotated, Edited and Indexed by Philip Terry and David Bellos Reviewed by Karen Langley Regular readers of Shiny New Books may recall the Bookbuzz piece earlier this year…
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 possibly correct) statement that ‘This novel…
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 of Pascal Garnier. Garnier, who died…
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 Elisa Shua Dusapin, and the first…
Maigret and the Informer, translated by William HobsonMaigret and Monsieur Charles, translated by Ros Schwarz Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Simenon was a supercharged writing machine, a prodigious figure whose élan…