A Japanese man tries to form a relationship with his half-French child, who has grown up on the other side of the world. The other side of the story told in A Single Rose, this nevertheless ... read more
A slim, charming and witty riff on Proustian themes - the shallowness of society, the impossibility of love, the enduring power of art... Life-affirming!
Not all are hidden by luxuriant, pointy moustaches... The painter's only novel is a baroque and decadent tale set in the 1930s, first published in 1944.
Breaking free of conformity, a woman leaves her husband, flat and career for a new, queer life: first part of an autofictional trilogy; the prequel in fact to last year's Love Me Tender.
A story handed down through generations of women becomes a tale within tales, accumulating myths and family histories. Translated from the Romanian. The author has won the EU Prize for Liter... read more
Drawing on the author's own experiences of WW2, the novel's protagonist rebels against the pressures of family and politics in Fascist Italy. First published in 1949. By the author of Forbid... read more
In the wake of the success of Baron Bagge in 2022, here's another tight novella by the Austrian mid-C20th novelist, this time about the fear of revenge after WW2.
An excellent Catalan novel from the 1970s, about flight and return, in which the Civil War still looms over the tail-end of Franco's era and modernity blooms. A marvellous evocation of Barce... read more
A compulsive political thriller that takes us deep into the Kremlin and the psychology of authoritarianism: at its heart is Putin's chief spin-doctor, the still centre of a delirious propaga... read more
Tokyo, an astonishly good cook and multiple murders. This is not a who-dunnit but a why-dunnit - and there is much to savour, both malicious and delicious.
Written in the form of a letter to Marcus Aurelius, this timeless novel reimagines the Roman emperor Hadrian, looking back on his life. The prose is exquisite, the musings on art and death, ... read more
The author's investigation of her family's history and her own identity was sparked by the arrival of an anonymous postcard bearing four names that arrived over forty years after those four ... read more