Norwegian Kjersti Skomsvold’s novel – The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am – just might change the way you interact with people you’ve always ignored.
Review: A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards
Yvvette Edwards’s Booker longlisted novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, is an elegantly structured story of guilt and redemption, and one of the best of year.
Review of Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin (Korea)
Never over-sentimental, Please Look After Mom succeeds as a sensitive and powerful examination of the selflessness of parental love.
Book Review: Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras (Argentina)
Kamchatka, a novel by Marcelo Figueras, is an intriguing fictional first-person remembrance of childhood in Argentina during the Dirty War (1976-1983).
Book Review: Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (China)
By Gwendolyn Dawson In Yan Lianke’s novel, Dream of Ding Village, a remote, agricultural village in China suffers from an AIDS epidemic. Ten years ago, the inhabitants of Ding Village sold their blood to blood collectors to increase their wealth and improve their standard of living. While the blood sales allowed the villagers to replace their traditional mud and thatch huts …
Book Review: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (Japan)
By Gwendolyn Dawson The Lake, the latest novel by well-known Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto, is an enigmatic love story told from the first-person perspective of Chihiro, a muralist and “going on thirty” daughter of unmarried parents. Chihiro’s unconventional childhood and the recent death of her mother contribute to her sense of isolation and unrest, and she spends hours staring out …
Book Review: Beautiful & Pointless by David Orr (USA)
By Gwendolyn Dawson Despite its subtitle, Beautiful & Pointless is not really a “guide” to modern poetry. I would call it more of a meditation. Orr, the poetry critic for the New York Times Book Review, doesn’t really explain the various poetic forms or the different methods for deconstructing and understanding a poem. He doesn’t give any helpful tips to the …
Book Review: Open City by Teju Cole (Nigeria)
By Gwendolyn Dawson From the very first paragraph, Teju Cole’s debut novel announces itself as the tale of a wanderer: “And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city … These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily …
Book Review: Funeral for a Dog by Thomas Pletzinger (Germany)
By Gwendolyn Dawson Thomas Pletzinger’s imaginative novel, Funeral for a Dog, proceeds on two parallel planes. One plane is inhabited by the present-day diary entries of German journalist/ethnographer Daniel Mandelkern recording a brief visit to the Italian lakeside home of reclusive children’s book author Dirk Svensson. The other plane consists of Svensson’s previously-written memoir about his travels through New York …
Book Review: Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk (South Africa)
By Gwendolyn Dawson At the beginning of this epic novel, seventy-year-old Milla de Wet is confined to her bed. Once the strong and competent owner of a successful farm inherited from her mother, Milla suffers from A.L.S. and now is left with only the ability to blink her eyes and, after a while, not even that. Milla is entirely dependent on …
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