Every year I travel to Krems, lower Austria, to attend European Literature Days (ELit), a three-day literary festival. This year the theme was ‘Animals and Other Humans’. As Walt… Read More
Blog Directory > Books & Literature Blogs > The BookBlast® Diary books-and-literature Blog >
The Bookblast® Diary Blog
1
Blogarama's Sponsor
Tags:
Online journal The BookBlast® Diary showcases independent trade publishing and writing from France. The BookBlast 10x10 Tour, in association with Waterstones, visits nine regions of England annually, celebrating risk-taking publishers who fill a unique niche in discovering talent.
Maggie Gee is renowned for her imaginative, thought-provoking novels which embrace a wide range of themes and genres, underpinned by social commentary, satire and shrewd humour. The Red Chil… Read More
Maggie Gee’s exclusive interview for the BookBlast Podcast is already available, so here is the visual version for readers who prefer reading the written word to auditory listening. A… Read More
Good to see Cassava Press and their latest initiative in the news: The just-launched Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize celebrates the “best in unpublished non-fic… Read More
Sharif Gemie reviews Proust, Roman Familial by Laure Murat for BookBlast. Since 1913, almost seven million people have started to read Proust’s epic: the number of those who have compl… Read More
Beautifully written in purist prose, Sad Tiger is a vivid account of incest and its consequences. But this book is more than a confessional memoir in which the author lifts the lid on shocki… Read More
Beautifully written in purist prose, Sad Tiger is a vivid account of incest and its consequences. But this book is more than a confessional memoir in which the author lifts the lid on shocki… Read More
Beautifully written in purist prose, Sad Tiger is a vivid account of incest and its consequences. But this book is more than a confessional memoir in which the author lifts the lid on shocki… Read More
What is it like, reading Marcel Proust a century on? Why should you read In Search of Lost Time? Sharif Gemie finds out. In May 2023, I had a problem which is probably familiar to many peopl… Read More
François-Henri Désérable travelled from Tehran to the border with Balochistan at the end of 2022, at the height of Iranian Government repression quashing civil unrest an… Read More
A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran details the adventures of François-Henri Désérable as he journeys from Tehran to the border with Balochistan at the height of Irania… Read More
A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran details the adventures of François-Henri Désérable as he journeys from Tehran to the border with Balochistan at the height of Irania… Read More
A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran details the adventures of François-Henri Désérable as he journeys from Tehran to the border with Balochistan at the height of Irania… Read More
A Little Luck is a skilfully structured novel by Claudia Piñeiro, the award-winning Argentinian crime and suspense writer, in which the role of chance and the choices people mak… Read More
A Little Luck is a skilfully structured novel by Claudia Piñeiro, the award-winning Argentinian crime and suspense writer, in which the role of chance and the choices people mak… Read More
A Little Luck is a skilfully structured novel by Claudia Piñeiro, the award-winning Argentinian crime and suspense writer, in which the role of chance and the choices people mak… Read More
A Little Luck is a skilfully structured novel by Claudia Piñeiro, the award-winning Argentinian crime and suspense writer, in which the role of chance and the choices people mak… Read More
Jean Michelin’s Those Who Stay is a powerful and deeply human novel about the impact of war on soldiers fighting in distant countries, and what these men are like when they return. Wea… Read More
Those Who Stay by Jean Michelin is a powerful and deeply human novel about the impact of war on soldiers fighting in distant countries, and what these men are like when they return. Wea… Read More
Those Who Stay by Jean Michelin is a powerful and deeply human novel about the impact of war on soldiers fighting in distant countries, and what these men are like when they return. Wea… Read More
American Fugue is at once a fictionalized biography of one of the most famous musicians of his time, and his contemporaries; a historical novel; a disillusioned meditation on the decadence o… Read More
American Fugue is at once a fictionalized biography of one of the most famous musicians of his time, and his contemporaries; a historical novel; a disillusioned meditation on the decadence o… Read More
American Fugue is at once a fictionalized biography of one of the most famous musicians of his time, and his contemporaries; a historical novel; a disillusioned meditation on the decadence o… Read More
Although The Children’s Bookshow hits the road in the Autumn, tickets to many shows have already sold out and the remainder are selling fast. All performances include a free book for e… Read More
Although The Children’s Bookshow hits the road in the Autumn, tickets to many shows have already sold out and the remainder are selling fast. All performances include a free book for e… Read More
Although The Children’s Bookshow hits the road in the Autumn, tickets to many shows have already sold out and the remainder are selling fast. All performances include a free book for e… Read More
For over twenty years, The Children’s Bookshow has tirelessly worked to promote, up and down the country, not only a love of reading, but also emerging and established children’s… Read More
In this authoritative anthology, Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience, journalist and writer, Onyekachi Wambu, collates some of the most signif… Read More
This year’s Beyond Words Festival featured a great line-up from across the Channel. Throughout the week, the Institut Français du Royaume Uni in South Kensington, London… Read More
The Children’s Bookshow is back! The writers and illustrators of children’s literature touring the regions of England this year are offering a fantastic variety of entertaining L… Read More
The Children’s Bookshow brings the joy of books and reading to schoolchildren across the UK each autumn. This year, the much loved and hugely popular national tour of writers and illus… Read More
London Book Fair is like speed dating for book trade professionals as they tell each other stories while buying and selling rights in half hour meeting slots. Negotiating rights deals &ndash… Read More
Why Do You Dance When You Walk? is Abdourahman Waberi’s most autobiographical work to date. Poet, novelist and essayist, his earlier stories and novels bring to life the story of his h… Read More
The Hippie Trail: A History by Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland is a rollicking and riveting read, chock-full of vivid anecdotes and insights. It is perfect for armchair travellers dreaming of… Read More
Stalking the Atomic City by Markiyan Kamysh must be one of the strangest examples of tourist literature ever written. Its focus is about visits to ‘the Zone’: the radioactive Exc… Read More
Rosa’s Bus by Fabrizio Silei, who refers to himself as a “researcher of human stories and events”, is a perfect early learning book for children from the age of seven upwar… Read More
A celebration of 25 years of Banipal Magazine translating and publishing contemporary Arab literature in English is being held at 7pm on Wednesday 18 January 2023 at the Irish Cultural Centr… Read More
This welcome collection contains twenty-seven short stories by six influential Spanish women writers, written over the past one hundred and twenty years. The translations are fluent and easi… Read More
Lack of time has meant that mastering the TBR&R pile has been a frustrating challenge this year. Many fantastic books have been published in 2022 by independent trade publishers ch… Read More
What an odd post-pandemic year 2022 has been, deranged in so many ways, over and beyond the realities of Brexit hitting home, and the depressing normalization of exploitation by the Governme… Read More
It was a delight to return, in person, to European Literature Days (ELit) a three-day literary festival, held in Krems, lower Austria. This year the theme was ‘Comedy and Crisis’… Read More
A prolific and acclaimed writer in his Italian homeland, Erri De Luca’s thought-provoking, philosophical investigation builds in suspense ending with an emotional bomb. Although a work… Read More
Madan Lal Dhingra’s great niece, Leena Dhingra, unravels the life and death of an Indian revolutionary in this haunting work that is part history, part memoir. What was the largest mov… Read More
“The story of Langford Grove School is a period piece. It is the story of the remarkable headmistress and sole proprietor, Elizabeth Curtis. Whether it was gin and scallops for lunch w… Read More
Héloïse Press champions world-wide female talent by giving voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad. Erica Mou (b. 1990) studied Literature, Pub… Read More
Afghan women have been in the news again since the Taliban have banned Voice of America, the BBC and Deutsche Welle after women students and teachers protested peacefully in response to seco… Read More
An autobiographical first novel, The Last One tells the story of Fatima and her family. The confusing polarities between different worlds and cultures that are portrayed sparked an intense M… Read More
Antony Thomas was making documentary films at a time in film and TV when leading producers and executives were backed by their organizations, could stand by their principles and get films ma… Read More
“My name is Fatima Daas. The name of a girl from Clichy who crosses the tracks to get to school.” An autobiographical first novel, The Last One tells the story of Fatima and her… Read More
How many of you have heard of Ethel Mannin (1900-84)? She wrote over a hundred books, including novels, political reflections, autobiographical memoirs and travel-writing, but she has receiv… Read More
The daughter of immigrants, Bel Olid is a prizewinning writer, translator and teacher of literature and creative writing. The President of the European Council of Associations of Literary Tr… Read More
Poetry and fiction by Vladimir Sharov, a medieval historian by education, was first published in the late 1970s. Be Like Children was a finalist for the Russian Booker and Big Book awards. … Read More
Evelio Rosero’s chilling dystopian parable, Stranger to the Moon, is like the detailed, imaginative nightmare of a fantastic surrealist painting by Max Ernst, populated by the bizarre… Read More
Continuing BookBlast’s series of interviews with the founders of independent presses, we catch up with Justin David, the publisher at www.inkandescent.co.uk and author of The Pharmacis… Read More
East London-based independent publisher Inkandescent “was ‘founded by outsiders for outsiders’ to celebrate original and diverse talent and to publish voices and stories th… Read More
Saïd Khatibi’s polyphonic novel, Sarajevo Firewood, pays homage to the victims of civil war in Algeria and Bosnia in the 1990s, and gives the survivors a voice. Scarred by erratic… Read More
Review | The Intimate Resistance, Josep Maria Esquirol (trs. Douglas Suttle) | Fum D’Estampa Press
A profound reflection on the human condition, Intimate Resistance is a welcome alternative to those glib bestselling books by counsellors and guides who synthesize complicated intellectual… Read More
Turf Wars is the second of Olivier Norek’s Captain Coste trilogy, set in the banlieues of Paris. Spiralling Upwards Norek has an unusual C.V. Born in Toulouse in 1975, he worked for a… Read More
Emerging from a time of great turmoil . . . all depending on your experiences over the past two years . . . Love in Five Acts could either strike a chord of recognition alleviating a residua… Read More
Sverker Johansson’s The Dawn of Language, adroitly translated by Frank Perry, weighs in at over 400 pages. We’re in the age of Great Simplifiers: each month produces a new crop o… Read More
Venetia Welby’s futuristic second novel, Dreamtime, has an altogether different atmosphere and resonance to her first, Mother of Darkness, set in London’s Soho. Although both nov… Read More
Imbued with her hallmark humour and heightened sensitivity, Faïza Guène’s Men Don’t Cry (Un homme, ça ne pleure pas) is her latest offering to lovers of good f… Read More
Tell us a bit about your childhood and where you grew up. It was a very privileged upbringing in the sense of growing up with a mother whose protective love and unquestioning belief i… Read More
Remember the Great Fear of March 2020? Remember the empty supermarket shelves, stripped bare of pasta, loo-rolls and flour? Many Brits feared that this was the End of Civilization as We Know… Read More
The king’s fool has had a distinct, privileged and vital role to play at royal courts throughout history. Mahi Binebine’s fool is contemporary, even though the story reads as tho… Read More
The French Muslim community numbers nearly 6 million, according to Joseph Downing, author of French Muslims in Perspective: Nationalism, Post-Colonialism and Marginalisation under the Republ… Read More
Established in 2019, Fum d’Estampa Press publishes award-winning Catalan language poetry, fiction and essays in English translation. Its founder, Doug Suttle, tells us what inspired hi… Read More
In translating the novel Forty Lost Years into English, Fum d’Estampa Press and Peter Bush have gifted Anglophone readers a forgotten gem of twentieth century fiction that not only off… Read More
Pierre Lemaitre, the Prix Goncourt-winning French novelist and screenwriter behind the Paris Crime Files a.k.a. Verhœven series, is brought to English-language readers by the publisher… Read More
Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo is an erudite, pithy assessment of the chauvo-feminist man based on personal lived experience and testimonies from women and men. Journalist, writer… Read More
In the Company of Men – The Ebola Tales by Véronqiue Tadjo is a beautifully written and translated, stark collection of concise narratives about the Ebola epidemic of 2014. A sh… Read More
The selected poems of Wanda Coleman, edited by the American poet Terrance Hayes, and published in the UK under the title Wicked Enchantment, has brought her back into the spotlight. Consider… Read More
Anne Serre is a remarkable and unusual writer; her pen a scalpel dissecting the human condition with painful precision. The Fool & Other Moral Tales – three novellas – are ly… Read More
“He stood at the edge of the pavement, exactly on the corner, a full head higher than those around him. Olivia waited for him to dip his head as a sign of respect, but he stood there… Read More
The Others is an irreverent yet poignant novel by Raül Garrigasait, deftly translated from the Catalan by Tiago Miller. Its central character is a young Prussian man who crosses Europe… Read More
Only yesterday, yet another story about small boats carrying migrants crossing the English Channel hit the headlines. Since the pandemic, the journey has become even more perilous. And it ha… Read More
Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, became an instant, international literary sensation when it was published in France. Her beautifully written, intimate and powerful description of… Read More
Views of China in the West have grown increasingly negative, with tensions heating up over the crushing of human rights in Hong Kong, the Uighur genocide and the activities of technology com… Read More
Kokoschka’s Doll is a surreal, poignant and sometimes dizzying reflection on the nature of the universe, life’s coincidences and, of course, the human condition. “I’m… Read More
Alastair Niven is the author of four books and numerous scholarly articles on aspects of Commonwealth and post-colonial literature. A judge of the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1994 and of the… Read More
Why write an autobiography? Setting aside the ‘celebrity’ memoir, it is generally undertaken in a person’s later years, usually to give insights into how experiences have s… Read More
Havana Year Zero by Karla Suárez, translated by Christina MacSweeney, is a brilliant, intense mystery where the past resurfaces in the present to suggest new possibilities for the fut… Read More
Venice Noir: The Dark History of the Lagoons is by a Venetian writer, cultural journalist and radio presenter, Isabella Panfido. To read about the folklore, myths and legends of the lagoon r… Read More
The ten young writers from Cameroon and Nigeria showcased in bilingual anthology Your Feet Will Lead You Where your Heart Is (Le Crépuscule des âmes sœurs) give an absorbi… Read More
The publication of La Familia Grande by Camille Kouchner reveals how incest is everpresent at the highest levels of French society, even among the most glamorous, powerful, bohemian, left wi… Read More
Mercedes Rosende is Uruguay’s leading woman crime writer. In 2005 she won the Premio Municipal de Narrativa for Demasiados blues, in 2008 the National Literature Prize for La muerte te… Read More
Tim Gutteridge has been a full-time translator since 1999, and works on a wide range of texts, including literary fiction, theatre, TV scripts, comics, academic articles and corporate commun… Read More
The Last Days of Ellis Island by Gaëlle Josse @WorldEdBooks and Ellis Island: A People’s History by Malgorzata Szejnert @ScribeUKbooks offer an excellent complementary read, givin… Read More
Look who’s back! Vernon Subutex: DJ guru of the nineteenth arrondissement. He is still homeless in Paris and more Peter Pan than ever. We first met him at the turn of the millenium as… Read More
Hello, hello! The second season of our weekly BookBlast Podcast series Bridging the Divide: Translation and the Art of Empathy went out in September. Our audience loved the first seven podca… Read More
Andrea Jeftanovic’s Theatre of War takes place over three acts and many scenes, and is acted out on various stages. True to its title, this is theatre in the shape of a novel, with the… Read More
An entertaining mocking of literary aspirations, Beka Adamashvili’s novel, Bestseller, is a rich, kaleidoscopic, polyphonic satire that looks at fame and aspirations. Georgia is little… Read More
In The Fig Tree, deftly translated by Olivia Hellewell, Goran Vojnović portrays three generations of a family whose lives are marked by the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its brutal a… Read More
The White Dress is the final part of a trilogy of works by Nathalie Léger that began with Exposition, translated by Amanda DeMarco, and published by Les Fugitives in 2019. L&eacu… Read More
A Musical Offering is Argentinian author Luis Sagasti’s second novel to appear in English. His first, Fireflies (also published by Charco Press and reviewed for The BookBlast Diary) sa… Read More
The Blessed Rita is a compelling portrait of the forgotten, and Tommy Wieringa makes a convincing case for empathy with those living on the margins of society. There is a chilling beauty to… Read More
The Moroccan poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist, Tahar Ben Jelloun, is one of France’s most celebrated writers. He has written extensively about Moroccan culture, the immigrant e… Read More
“And this also”, said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth” This epigraph, taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sets th… Read More
Hello, hello! Since the first seven episodes of our weekly series Bridging the Divide: Translation and the Art of Empathy went live in July, there are still eight episodes to look forward to… Read More
Starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic is not something many people would find enviable, though I was obviously delighted for the opportunity as so many others were being furl… Read More
