Eric Ambler (1909-1998) was a British author, and screenwriter, best known for his thriller/spy novels. In many of his novels, the protagonist is rarely a professional spy, a police officer, or a counter-intelligence operative; he is, instead, an amateur who finds himself haphazardly and unwillingly in the company of criminals or spies with real threats to his life. This is very much the approach of The Mask of Dimitrios (first published in 1939) which is often cited as one of the best of Ambler's novels. test
Robert Harris: Cicero Trilogy: Imperium, Lustrum, Dictator Historical fiction that brings alive the time, place, society, and personalities that defined the evolution of Rome and its empire, all framed through the life of one of the main protagonists. Cicero had neither family name, nor wealth, nor military exploits to his credit; what he did have was overweening ambition, a brilliant mind, and peerless ability as an orator, that let him scheme and manipulate and sway individuals and mobs. Life was a malestrom of shifting fortunes and political climates in which Cicero survived a long time, in and out of the pinnacles of influence and power, but in the end, he paid with his life. Not only excellent history but, in Harris's hands, page-turners that are hard to put down.
Sebald, (1944-2001) has been described as, "one of contemporary literature's most transformative figures." A retrospective on his writing said that his four prose fictions, Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz are, "...utterly unique. They combine memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography in the crucible of his haunting prose style to create a strange new literary compound." Sebald himself once described his writing as "documentary fiction." He also believed that the horrors of the 20th century could not be approached directly because their enormity would paralyse the ability to think about them morally and rationally. They must, therefore, be approached obliquely, and is what he achieved in Austerlitz, approaching the Holocaust.
Sarah Bakewell, (1962-) is an English writer of non-fiction. She has published four books: The Smart (about an 18th century forgery); The English Dane (about a 19th century adventurer who was a key player in a revolution in Iceland to break from Danish control); How To Live: A Life of Montaigne; her latest is At the Existentialist Cafe (about the existentialist movement).
Capsule reviews/summaries of a miscellany of books read July-August, 2106.
John Horne Burns (1916-1953): The Gallery
This first novel, published in 1947, is set largely in Naples in August, 1944 during the Allied, mainly US, occupation while war against the Germans continued to the north. The novel was widely acclaimed for its uncompromising portrayal of the motives and methods of the occupation and its effects on individuals, and morals, on both sides. Burns pulled no punches in his evaluation of American actions:
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2008) was an English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In the 1950s, she worked, with her husband, as co-editor of a magazine called World Review to which she contributed articles on literature, music and sculpture. She and her husband lived in public housing in the 1960s after her husband was disbarred for forging cheques. She then worked as a teacher in a drama school. Fitzgerald launched her literary career at the age of 58, in 1975. She won the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore (1979). The Times included her in a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. The Observer named her novel, The Blue Flower, as one of the ten best historical novels.
Zweig (1881-1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, librettist, journalist, and biographer. At the height of his literary career in the 1920s-1930s, he was one of the most popular, and most translated, writers in the world. As Hitler consolidated power, Zweig left Austria, in 1934, to move to England. In 1940, Zweig and his wife moved to New York where they lived for two months before moving again, to Brazil where they committed suicide in February, 1942. Looking at the state of Europe, Zweig wrote in his suicide note: "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearings a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth."
Mendoza (1949-) is a Mexican novelist and short story writer. He is a professor of literature at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. He is a key figure in, some even consider him the originator of, the genre known as 'narcoliterature' that explores the effects of drug trafficking and corruption in society. Silver Bullets is the first of Mendoza's novels to be translated into English.
Edward Lewis Wallant: The Pawnbroker A novel about the tortured soul of a Holocaust survivor, now a pawnbroker in Harlem (1950s), a man who is socially and emotionally bereft, living a life for which he sees no purpose. The loss of his family in the camps appears in only a few, separate moments of reminiscence but these heighten greatly the emotional impact. Wonderful writing throughout. (Reviewed on JustOttawa in December)
Daoud (1970-) is an Algerian writer and journalist. The Meursault Investigation is his first novel.
The Meursault Investigation
It is a bold writer who takes an acknowledged classic, Camus's The Stranger (aka The Outsider) and writes a novel that gives the other side of the story as told by the brother of the man who is murdered in the Camus book.
Urquhart (1919- ) is a retired Scottish businessman. He wrote The Forgotten Soldierat the age of 90. It became a best-seller and Urquhart was much in demand as a public speaker. After retiring from business, he taught computer skills to retired people and continued with his passion for ballroom dancing.
David Holdsworth is a retired public service officer who worked abroad and held a number of positions including in the Privy Council Office. He has now turned his skills to writing with a sharp eye for the foibles of government and public service. His first novel: The Ambassador’s Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of Embassy Lifedescribed the antics of diplomatic life in a fictitious country. His new book turns inward with a funny, satirical focus on the “tough on crime” agenda of the current government.
O Cadhain (1905-1970), whose name could most closely be rendered in English as Marteen O’Kine, was an Irish novelist, short story writer, journalist and school teacher. O Cadhain is considered Gaelic Ireland’s most important writer and a pioneer in Irish-language modernism. He wrote principally in Irish and also translated some works from English. The Dirty Dust is considered one of the greatest achievements of the Irish novel.
Vasquez (1973-) was described by The Guardian as, “among the most inventive and erudite or Colombia’s emerging generation of novelists”. He lived in Paris (1996-1999) and received a doctorate in Latin American Literature from the Sorbonne, followed by Barcelona for about 10 years, until 2012; he now lives in Bogota. Vasquez has written three principal novels: The Informers, The Secret History of Costaguana,and The Sound of Things Falling; the last won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2014; the first South American writer to do so. There were two earlier novels, but Vasquez prefers to ignore them.
Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the University of Cambridge Department of History and Political Science. Her book H is for Hawk (2014) won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Costa Book of the Year Award. Earlier books include Shaler’s Fish (2001) and Falcon (2006).
Shteyngart was born in Leningrad (1972) and moved to the USA at the age of seven. His novels, which have received various awards, include The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), Absurdistan(2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010); he published a memoir, Little Failure (2014).
Ferrante is an interesting person and a terrific writer. She is the author of seven novels over 20 years. She is very popular in Europe and increasingly so in North America, but she maintains a strict anonymity. She has given interviews only in writing, and has provided a bare minimum of personal information: she is from Naples, she is a mother.
This report was commissioned by Soviet authorities as a description of life in the camp, and it is the first thing that Levi wrote about his experience in Auschwitz. The Report describes the transport by train for four days from Italy, general life in the camp, and perhaps because Benedetti was a medical doctor, much of the short piece focuses on medical conditions and illnesses. One can clearly see information and incidents that Levi expanded upon in his later books about the camp and life afterwards. Levi and Benedetti survived the camp together, made their way back to Italy through a long and tortuous route, and remained life-long friends.
Leo Perutz (1882-1957) was a Jewish Czech -Austrian writer. More Austrian than Czech; he moved from Prague at 7; lived in Vienna until the ? Anschluss when he moved to Palestine; returned to Austria occasionally in the 1950s; died visiting friends in Austria in 1957. Perutz is said to have been admired as a writer by Borges, Calvino, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene.
I like book lists whether compiled as the “Top 100 of the Year”, or the “Top 100 Novels of All Time” or, more modestly, lists of favourites from authors, and the lists of the many individual annual literary prizes.The lists are fun and may lead one to dis bycover new books; they certainly illustrate the breadth and depth of reading that can be done; and sometimes they are frustrating because they reinforce the knowledge that no matter how long you live, you will never read all of the books that you would like to.
