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Translation Week: Winter Flowers by Angélique Villeneuve, translated by Adriana Hunter #NovNov

Translation Week: Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder #NovNov

Hotel Iris is the story of Mari, a 17-year-old woman who works for her tyrannical mother in a run down hotel by the sea. She meets an older man, a translator of Russian novels, who lives on an island and is rumoured to have murdered his wife. They start a relationship based on dominance and…

Translation Week: Dinner by César Aira, translated by Katherine Silver #NovNov

I’m kicking off Translation week for Novellas in November with a bold and frankly quite odd book from Argentine author César Aira. Aira’s work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño, and his work is characterised by playful juxtapositions and unexpected tangents that defy any standard idea of plot. Aira has described…

Short Nonfiction Buddy Read: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller #NovNov

Short Nonfiction: Hiroshima by James Hersey #NovNov #NonFicNov

Originally published as a 30,000 word essay in The New Yorker, James Hersey’s Hiroshima had a powerful impact despite the brevity of the work. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in August 1945, decimating the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and killing 100,000 men, woman and children and leaving countless others suffering the…

Short Nonfiction: The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy #NovNov #NonFicNov

Nonfiction November: Book Pairing – Novellas and Nonfiction!#NovNov #NonFicNov

50 Books at 50!

No 397 The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff

“Vengeance is walking Salem, the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” The Crucible, Arthur Miller In 1692 in the small town of Salem Massachusetts, it was put into public record that 700 witches were at large, ranging in age from 5 to 80. Neighbours informed…