A strange tale indeed, this one. If you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you’ll know that it’s perfectly possible to mix the brutal history of the Spanish Civil War, magical realism, a tight rural community that blends into the wooded mountains and…
A strange tale indeed, this one. If you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you’ll know that it’s perfectly possible to mix the brutal history of the Spanish Civil War, magical realism, a tight rural community that blends into the wooded mountains and…
Finland is 99 today, and counting. Independence Day today marks the start of the centenary year. The celebrations really kick off with the New Year – including Book Finland 2017 which celebrates something Finns do a lot of – reading. The average Finn borrows…
Sometimes reading a new book is like meeting a new friend. Chika Sagawa was born over a century ago, and this new volume of her writing is slim, but it was enough to seal the friendship for me. It may…
Travel to a world like ours, but different. Where you have to work to survive, but if there is the slightest suspicion that you’re not in your right mind, they’ll take you away, isolate you to stop the ‘disease’ spreading,…
The first Mongolian poetry book in English translation to be published in the US after The End of the Dark Era – it’s no surprise it’s from Phoneme. Tseveendorjin Oidov, like so many artists in the Soviet sphere of influence,…
Good things come to those who wait. I’m not the only one who has been waiting for the next volume of the Red Abbey trilogy to be published. Luckily Marja Kyrö’s Finnish translation of Maria Turtschaninoff’s Naondel came out with…
“I write because I’m desperate and I’m tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip…