The story is told from the point of view of a gecko, quietly observing everything from the wall of Felix Ventura‘s living room. Felix is fabricating pasts for clients who request it. Invention mixes with reality, until one dark episode of the past comes into the present because the day of reckoning has come. Nice small piece of magic realism set in Angola 🇦🇴.

Written in the 1960s and set in a French small town, this is an astutely constructed novela. Tony Falcone, son of Italian migrants married with one daughter, and Andrée Despierres, wife of the local grocer, live an extramarital passion. All this takes a murderous turn for good or bad reasons: love, weakness, non-communication, lies and denial. Text jumps back and forth between present and flashbacks in a nicely knitted pattern.

Northern Spain, towards the end of the civil war in January 1939. A prominent fascist figure is allowed to escape death by a soldier fighting for the Spanish Republic. Sixty years later, with democracy back in Spain, the narrator/author starts the quest to find the Republican soldier. A powerful novel about fascism vs democracy, Republican heritage, paso doble, Roberto Bolaño, and the importance of fighting losing wars. A must read.

Historical novel at its best. It's the last part of a trilogy about the Haitian uprising from slavery (All souls' rising) revolution (Master of the crossroad) and French repression from 1791 to 1802. Bell has a knack to create moods, colors, smells even, and situations. Amazing blending of fictional and historical characters. Possible to read each part separately, but at a price of losing some subtleties intertwined in the narration. Great read!

This book describes the ups and downs of a small community of crippled, deaf, or blind in a remote Chinese village. One day, the local political mogul proposes to them to set up a touring show to raise funds in order to buy from the Russian the embalmed corpse of Lenin and transform it into a tourist attraction. All goes well until human nature shows its darker sides. At times a bit slow, but nice read with a critical look at modern day China.

How does war destroy the mind ? Powers, who served in Iraq, describes how the horrors of war seep into the mind of Bartle the narrator and anihilate all sense of humanity. Chapters about Iraq alternate with ones describing life in Virginia before and after combat time. Bartle tries hard to avoid his mind flying already home to the US, « while his ass is still in Iraq », because this would most likely mean death. This book is a slap in the face.

Do you know of the custom of the outgoing US President writing a letter to his/her successor ? Well, this book is kind of a version from the Roman empire era. Hadrian, Emperor, writes a detailed letter to his successor Marcus Aurelius : challenges awaiting in managing the Empire, reflections about art, Grece, philosophy, life, death, and deep love for Antinoüs, one of his lieutenant. Very well written, but many sometimes hard to get references.

Istanbul, 1591. A shadow “commando“ of illuminators is tasked to produce drawings for an important book. Except for a few people, no one has the full picture of the content of that book, which fabrication is kept secret. Everything goes as planned, until one of the craftsmen is found dead in a well, soon to be followed by the head of the project. The nephew starts the enquiry into these murders. Sometimes too packed with details, but great read !

How do you recover from having your lower jaw blown off by a bullet in a terrorist attack? In this book, Lançon, victim of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015, tells plainly how he has found his way out of the horror. Without being prescriptive, he tells how he used Mann‘s Magic Mountain or Proust‘s Search as crutches and how lucky he was benefiting from outstanding medical staff, close friends, caring family, and magic hands of a female surgeon.

The center forward of the Barcelona football club gets strange philosophical death threats. The private detective Pepe Carvalho is called to clear who is behind these messages. Set at the end of the 80's, when real estate speculation was thriving due to the big works trigerred by the 1992 Olympics, it becomes clear that something is wrong as well with what happens to another small football club in the city and its own centre forward.

Legless, armless, eyeless. Remains of a strangely mutilated body are discovered in a lake in Stockholm. Great start for this piece of nordic noir, set in Sweden in...1793. Troubled by the afterschocks of the French Revolution, the country's corrupt elite is connected to the sinister discovery, which Winge (the brain) and Cardell (the hands) are decidedly set to elucidate. Lots of snow, violent oppression of women, and a ring come into the picture.

A black humored capture of the mood in Iraq in the early 2000. At times when bombs regularly go off in Baghdad, a ragman collects limbs and body parts from victims to stitch together a new being. The creature gets a soul and starts a life of its own, avenging each of the victims its body is composed of. The story is set in Bataween, a Baghdad neighborhood. Interesting representation of what Iraqis have been going through in recent times. Nice read

Well, well...this book has been shelved by some next to Midnight's Children or One Hundred Years of Solitude. 🤔 I am sorry to say we are far from these masterpieces. Though it is a nicely put sagalike history of post WWII Indonesia, the magic elements are too scarce and thin. All is seen through the eyes of a strong mother (earning her life as a prostitute) and her daughters living through the ups and downs of a small town on the coast of Java.

This book is about how Hope Clearwater confronts the machist egos of the scientific and academic world. She studies the behaviour of chimpanzees somewhere between Angola and Congo, in the middle of a civil war, and has to fight hard to make her point...
This plot is intertwined with flashbacks of an earlier period where she sees her marriage with John go down in a similar battle of egos. Pleasant read, with still one or two head-shaking moments.

Nice, well written, and thus fluent read. Enard tells the story of Lakdhar, a young Moroccan from Tangier. He is caught between the tremendously magnetic but at times superficial modernity luring him into Spain, just across the Mediterranean, and the terrfyingly dogmatic but dangerous reassurance of radical Islam. Lakdhar avoids the latter by falling in love and above all reading books. A praise to books as mind openers and fighters of evil!

Serious local journalism, just before internet days. Constance, an asthmatic gulping every now and then a famous chocolate bar which name starts and ends with S, is assigned to cover strange happenings in a freshly opened shopping mall. Fake blood is smeared on walls, threat letters are sent to the mall's managers and so on. Reason for this may be found in the glorious industrial past of this UK imaginary city.

This book is the other side of the serie The Americans. No undercover agents here, but a Russian Jew black marketeer migrating to the US in the early 1980's. Niki Zoracoff gets entangled in suspiscious relations with the Mafia, and catches the attention of Alex Simon, a cop investigating into the dark sides of Italian families. The book is constructed around encounters: Russians and Italians, cops and informants, local cops and Feds. Nice read.

The collapse of financial markets catches a bunch of brainless golden boys (and their wives) from London's City in a remote Tunisian resort. The narrator, a Swiss businessman, describes their world of assertiveness and selfishness go down. The only thing that remains is their limitless contempt for other people, which makes them look helplessly ridiculous when things turn sour. Great short read.

How does the lighthearted universe of an 11 year old, full of laughter and play, come tumbling down because of political turmoil and ethnic violence? Small country describes the 1993 and 94 terrible events in Burundi and Rwanda (a bloodshed coup and a genocide) as seen through the eyes of Gabriel. Not sure the moods of Bujumbura evoked in the book can be felt as vividly by someone who has not been there, but this is definitely worth the read.

In Leo Africanus, Amin Maalouf tells the story of a life trip around the Mediterranean Sea in the 15th and 16th century. Hassan, born in Grenada, when the South of 🇪🇸 was part of the Islamic world, is pushed with his family towards Fes in Morocco, by the Catholic kings. This is only the first stretch: Cairo, Tunis, Constantinople and Rome will follow in an adventure like life. Nice piece of historical writing. Liked the easy read.

Just happened to read this 📚 taking dust on my shelf 😊in French when I saw it is being published right now in English, with an intro from the great William Vollman.
The book is about a true historical character. Omer pacha is a man of Serbian ascent converted to Islam, and sent by the Ottoman to stem turmoils in Bosnia in 1850. It is a series of portraits a bit dull and flat of the persons surrounding Omer pacha. Barely worth the reading...

What a disappointment! 😞😞😞😞I am a fan of Antonio Lobo Antunes, but this..... has been dropped after 100 pages. If ever this is translated into English, don't bother. And go to other of this author's much more amazing work such as The land at the end of the world🌎, The Inquisitor's manual, or The Splendor of 🇵🇹 (not read yet but supposed to be amazing) Have a great reading day.

Just finished! A fine book about cultural shock, difficulties of integration and twin sisters. It is set mainly in late 70's London, with members from a migrant Turkish family as main characters. A murder makes this world tumbling down only to be reshaped through resilience. Good and fluent read !