Tag: Book Blasts

Review | Crocodile Tears, Mercedes Rosende | Bitter Lemon Press

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 tendrá tus ojos and in 2019 the LiBeraturpreis in Germany for Crocodile Tears.

The only other literature I have had the good fortune to read in translation from the second-smallest nation in South America, includes the poetry of Mario Benedetti, and the prose of Juan Carlos Onetti, the latter translated by Peter Bush.

“What happens when fear is automated in your mind?” Sergio Bitar, Minister of Mines in the cabinet of Salvador Allende, Chile

Continue reading Review | Crocodile Tears, Mercedes Rosende | Bitter Lemon Press

Guest Review | Lucy Popescu | Tazmamart: 18 Years in Morocco’s Secret Prison, Aziz BineBine | Haus

Tazmamart was an underground military prison in southeast Morocco where those considered enemies of the king were detained from 1972 to 1991. It was built after two failed coup d’états against Hassan II of Morocco. On 10 July 1971, around a thousand soldiers were driven to Skhirat palace, where the king was celebrating his birthday and when a shot was fired, panic ensued. Hassan survived the mayhem and those deemed responsible were rounded up and dispatched to Kenitra prison. Many of those detained were unwitting participants in the alleged coup and, like Aziz BineBine, a recent graduate of the Royal Military Academy, had not fired a shot. He was one of several army officers sent to Kenitra and later to Tazmamart. Continue reading Guest Review | Lucy Popescu | Tazmamart: 18 Years in Morocco’s Secret Prison, Aziz BineBine | Haus

News | The BookBlast® Podcast 2020 series | Bridging the Divide, full listing

The BookBlast® Podcast 2020 | Bridging the Divide: Translation & the Art of Empathy | 30 July to 05 November

Thursday 30 July, 5 pm: A ground-breaking weekly podcast series kicks off, championing independent publishers committed to publishing writing in translation; their authors and translators; including a guest interview with the publisher behind Nordic Noir.

The podcast line-up features award-winning, bestselling authors from across Europe, including Lars Mytting, J.S. Margot, Tommy Wieringa and Tahar Ben Jelloun, as well as interviews with their publishers Christopher MacLehose, Adam Freudenheim and Philip Gwyn Jones. Continue reading News | The BookBlast® Podcast 2020 series | Bridging the Divide, full listing

Extract | Only the Dead: A Levantine Tragedy, T. J. Gorton

T. J. Gorton’s debut novel Only the Dead: A Levantine Tragedy (Quartet Books) has been shortlisted for the Author’s Club First Novel Award. The winner will be announced tomorrow, Sunday 17th May, at the Authors’ Club LitFest Online 2020. 

The narrative moves back and forth between civil war in Beirut and the Levant of 1915-18, as Vartan Nakashian, an Armenian from Aleppo, looks back over his tumultuous life, involving espionage, betrayal and revenge at a time of war and genocide. Here is an extract to give you a taste of the author’s style and voice. You can buy a copy of the novel HERE

oOo

“Dust motes danced in the sunbeams. Leaning back, he watched their senseless, ceaseless movement and for some reason thought again of old Bustros, the patriarch of a great Greek Orthodox tribe. He would be amazed to see his house today, nearly two hundred years after he built it; surrounded by roads and overlooked by an office block, its gar- dens bulldozed for another road that never happened, was never intended to happen. Turned into a no-man’s land where the militias dump bodies, sometimes burning them. Another reason to keep the windows shut, the oily smoke reeking of gasoline and barbecue. As though anyone cared to identify yesterday’s victims. It’s tomorrow’s they’re worried about.     Continue reading Extract | Only the Dead: A Levantine Tragedy, T. J. Gorton

Interview | Gerald Jacobs, writer and critic

Gerald Jacobs is based in North London. The Literary Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, he has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines. His books include Judi Dench: A Great Deal of Laughter; A Question of Football (with John North and the late Emlyn Hughes of Liverpool and England), The Sacred Games; and Nine Love Letters. His novel Pomeranski is published on 30 April. 

You were born in post-war Brixton? What sorts of books were in your family home?
I was actually born in Cheltenham, where my parents happened to be at the time but never lived there. I was brought up in the family home in Brixton. (I first made a conscious visit to Cheltenham when I was about thirty, and was very taken with it.)

We had a limited but varied amount of books on our two or three bookshelves. We made full, regular use of the local Carnegie Library. My father was not a great reader beyond books about the Second World War. There were a few, infrequently consulted religious prayer books and a Bible. My mother read novels and poetry. I loved reading a comic series called Classics Illustrated — picture-frame versions of Dickens, Dumas, Walter Scott etc. I also borrowed my mother’s Agatha Christie novels and read the wonderful comics consisting of pages of words without pictures: Wizard; Hotspur; Rover; and Adventure.
 Continue reading Interview | Gerald Jacobs, writer and critic