Although I have no idea how this book first came to my attention, (I follow a twisting path with many diversions on these literary research expeditions), I'm so glad I happened upon it. I can safely say that this might be the best thriller about a beleaguered mushroom...
Budapest, March 1944. The Nazis invade and occupy Hungary and so begins the systematic deportation of Jews under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann and with the cooperation of the Hungarian authorities. In only fifty-six days between May and July of that year, 437,402...
The first time I have come across a book written originally in Catalan, this is a classic that deserves to be much better known. Natalia is a young woman from Barcelona who enjoys her job at a bakery but gives it up to marry Quimet shortly before the outbreak of the...
I try my best to avoid using clichés in these sales pitches, but what can I say except this book is a truly heartwarming novel with friendship, love and loneliness at its heart. In her late thirties, Tsukiko is living a solitary existence in Tokyo, until one evening...
"I didn't like my own secrets. I liked other people's even less." Writen in 1987, this novel charting the relationship between a successful writer and her housekeeper, Emerence, perhaps draws many parallels with Szabó's own life, after her rehabilitation by the...
After her husband's death, Effie finds herself uprooted from her home and her previous existence, with barely any say in the matter, in order to live with her daughter Iza in Iza's modern apartment in Budapest. Overwhelmed by grief and bewildered by the move to a...
Perhaps, like me, at the start of the pandemic in 2020, you found yourself wondering if this was it? Might civil society as we know it be about to disintegrate? How would communities cope, would selfishness or cooperation prevail? These themes and much more are...
Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family and old age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Daniele Mallarico is a successful ilustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. Mario is Daniele's...
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his ten-year-old son, Daniel, one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book and...
"This is a novel to lose oneself in, and it promotes the sort of reading experience we remember from childhood - of complete absorption into a fantasy world" Irish Times Published in 2017, this was to be Carlos Ruiz Zafón's last novel before his untimely death in June...