Fiction Emily Bronte England 1847 367 I first read this when I was about 16, and only happened to read it again because I was trapped on holiday with little else to read. I didn't remember much about it from before; only that I'd enjoyed it and thought it was well written. It turns out my sixteen year old self was not mistaken. Hard to place it though, I thought while reading it this time around, within an obvious English context. Its intense emotional landscape certainly bears little resemblance to the other great novels of the nineteenth century. The psychological account of Heathcliff's depraved vision of revenge is truly compelling. Yes Fiction Jean Cocteau France 1929 153 YadaYada Yes Fiction Bernardo Atxaga Euskadi 1989 326 YadaYada Yes Fiction Mircea Eliade Romania 1979 128 YadaYada Yes Fiction Antonio Lobo Antunes Portugal 1988 210 YadaYada Yes Fiction Jakov Lind Austria 1963 151 YadaYada Yes Fiction Aleksandar Tisma Serbia 1980 342 YadaYada Yes Fiction Vladimir Nabokov Russia 1930 201 Not perhaps Nabokov's best work, but far from his worst. (I am a great Nabokov fan, it has to be said). The novel seems to fall into two halves: the boy growing up to become the chessmaster; and his later relationship with his wife and mental breakdown. The breakdown itself is a bravura piece of Nabokov, as Luzhin begins to see the whole world before him as a chess-game. The latter parts, too, as he begins to remember the life of chess which, since his breakdown, he has learned to forget, are fascinatingly told and highly memorable. Yes Fiction Patrick Rambaud France 1997 294 YadaYada Yes Fiction Mariano Azuela Mexico 1915 118 YadaYada Yes Fiction Roberto Bolano Chile 2000 130 YadaYada Yes Fiction Patrick Rambaud France 2000 307 YadaYada Yes Fiction Jules Romains France ???? 125 A short but very intense description of a man falling in love with a woman, their subsequent marriage and the first few weeks of their sex life together. The beginning of the novel - the first 40 pages or so - are very slow, as the narrator prepares us for the story he wishes to tell: which is a minute examination of their physical and mental relationship, and particularly their mutual attitude towards the act of sex. Yes Fiction Ignacio Padilla Mexico 2000 192 YadaYada Yes Fiction Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro Brazil 1971 146 YadaYada Yes Fiction Jorge Ibarguengoitia Mexico 1965 117 YadaYada Yes Fiction H.D. USA 1927 234 YadaYada Yes Fiction Antonio Benitez-Rojo Cuba 1985 201 YadaYada Yes Fiction Sebastiano Vassalli Italy 1993 180 YadaYada Yes Fiction Alfredo Bryce Echenique Peru 1999 262 A truly appalling title, admittedly, but disguising an intriguing book. The story of a rarely consummated love played out over a lifetime, narrated by the male but largely through the letters of the female protagonist. I guess I appreciated it all the more because it played nicely on some of my own experiences. I'll certainly be tracking down a few of his other books. Yes Fiction Erich Hackl Austria 1987 115 YadaYada Yes Fiction Unknown Japan c.970 275 YadaYada Yes Fiction Kalman Mikszath Hungary 1885 132 YadaYada Yes Fiction Abel Posse Argentina 1987 301 YadaYada Yes Fiction Jean Rouaud France 1990 149 A nostalgic work about three deaths in a family, taking place one after another over a short period of time. Beautifully written, it consists of three reflective and intertwined evocations of its central characters. Yes Fiction Didier van Cauwelaert France 1994 152 This novel didn't start very well, but suddenly picked up about page 40 when it went off at a fascinating tangent. It has a great idea at the heart of it (a man falsely discovered to be an immigrant who is sent back to a country in which he doesn't belong) and is often wryly funny. Yes Fiction James Hanley England 1931 175 YadaYada Yes Fiction Junichiro Tanizaki Japan 1929 202 I've read a few Tanizaki books before and never found them all that interesting, but at least they're readable. Mostly he seems to deal with close interpersonal relations. This one engaged me particularly because the experiences depicted were close enough to some of my own. Yes Fiction Cesar Aira Argentina 1991 248 YadaYada Yes Fiction Carmen Martin Gaite Spain 1996 194 An interestingly written and perceptive work about a woman and her relations with her parents and her partner. Her dense style I found like a spun-out version of Grace Paley. I've no doubt I'll read a few more of her novels. Yes Fiction Henry Green England 1950 168 YadaYada Yes Fiction Naguib Mahfouz Egypt 1985 103 YadaYada Yes Fiction Michel Tournier France 1980 247 Tournier is always interesting, and often (from what I've read) deals with topics which are legendary (or at least semi-legendary). Here he retells the stories of The Three (Four) Wise Men - the story of the fourth (particularly the evocation of the salt-based world of Sodom) proving the most interesting and memorable. Yes Fiction Eduardo Berti Argentina 1997 156 YadaYada Yes Fiction Yevgeny Yevtushenko Russia 1981 302 YadaYada Yes Fiction Gusztav Rab France 1963 236 YadaYada Yes Fiction Ludvik Vaculik Czech 1971 167 YadaYada Yes Fiction Antoine de Saint-Exupery France 1942 169 YadaYada Yes Fiction Jean-Christophe Rufin France 2001 429 This is a yarn, an adventure story about two children who are sent away with a group of French colonists by a scheming aunt on a voyage to appropriate part of Brazil. It's entertaining enough, and interesting on the internecine religious hatreds of their precarious little community. Yes Fiction Gabriel Garcia Marquez Colombia 2005 115 A slight edition to the Garcia Marquez oeuvre and pleasing enough to read. Yes Fiction Danilo Kis Yugoslavia 1976 135 Perhaps this is rather a collection of short stories than a novel, each of them as it happens about an (I guess) fabricated revolutionary. Worth keeping with: I found the early stories unengaging but the later stories were definitely more impressive. Yes Fiction Erich Hackl Austria 1989 135 A gypsy girl is fostered in Austria by a nice socialist family just before the outbreak of the second world war. It doesn't end happily. Yes Fiction Pawel Huelle Poland 1987 304 A story of nostalgia about growing-up in post-war Poland, full of a fashionably repetitive and uncertain narrative. Something of an inferior version of Gert Hofmann perhaps, I found myself afterwards disinclined to seek out more of Huelle's work. Yes Fiction John Hawkes US 1960 175 The Americans don't seem to celebrate their avant-garde writers much, and certainly I'd never heard of John Hawkes before: I came across him on the Prix Medici's Roman Etranger winners, which piqued my interest. Set in England, which is always interesting in a foreign novel, the work is a perplexing thriller. By the end I felt confused enough that I should begin it again, but I must admit I didn't feel much inclined. Since it's his most critically praised work, something tells me I'd be better off reading something of his that's less well thought of. Yes Fiction Amin Maalouf Lebanon 1992 222 This surprised me by being an SF novel. I was deceived by the Islamic design on the cover and my own prejudice. It's an interesting enough work of SF too, its premise being, what would happen if the human race were to favour (as has been its historical inking) male children over female. Nicely enough told and easily readable. Yes Fiction Michael Arlen England 1934 181 YadaYada Yes Fiction Christa Wolf Germany 1987 109 YadaYada Yes Fiction Sylvie Germain France 1992 127 A very slender book - in truth a lot less than its above-claimed 127 pages. More a mood piece than a novel, it evokes pity and the city of Prague well. I used it as a taster for further (longer) Germain books, and it was interesting enough that I'm prepared to give them a go. Yes Fiction Amelie Nothomb France 2002 126 A slight, harmless novel, which is readable enough in its way, about a woman conforming to the type of her birth. I think someone should have told her to remove the last few pages though. Yes Fiction Ilya Ehrenburg Russia 1929 157 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Maurice Keen England 1968 320 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Frederic Morton England 1961 258 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction David Birmingham England 1993 192 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Christopher Hibbert England 1990 338 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair England 1999 339 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Jean-Paul Kauffmann France 1997 243 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Joachim C Fest Germany 1963 458 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Binjamin Wilkomirski Switzerland 1995 155 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Vincent Cronin England 1967 306 YadaYada Yes Non-Fiction Eva Hoffman U.S. 1998 258 YadaYada Yes Short Story Rudyard Kipling England 1894 169 YadaYada Yes Short Story Gert Hofmann Germany 1981 285 YadaYada Yes Short Story Isak Dinesen Denmark 1942 218 YadaYada Yes Short Story Jose Donoso Chile 1990 158 YadaYada Yes Short Story Anatole France France 1986 238 YadaYada Yes