I’ve been wanting to read this FOREVER (three years) but kept putting it off: it’s the first in a series of novels and I wanted to wait until they were all available to binge on. I thought I’d made it, and only realised this morning that although the fourth and final one has been published, the English translation won’t be available till October. Bummer.
It’s hard to talk meaningfully about this book without spoilers. Let’s see…the first chapter deals with the discovery of the murdered body of a famous author, and is narrated by his childhood friend, one of the people who discovers the body. Soon after, someone confesses to the murder, but the detective in charge of the case thinks there’s more to it, and decides to keep digging. Continue reading Malice
We did Moravia briefly when I was studying Italian for my Arts degree, so my very first impression of this novel was that reading him in translation makes things MUCH easier. Continue reading The Conformist
Well, the clue’s in the name: Garcia Marquez carpets his hero’s final morning with warnings, omens, secrets held in plain sight, reluctant assassins, and the kinds of just-missed opportunities usually found in the penultimate scene of a Shakespeare tragedy, but his death still speeds inevitably towards him. Narrated looking back from years later, the forces at play in this novel(la) are two sides of the same coin, memory and fate, and there’s no real contest about which is the stronger. A perfect intro to this Nobel laureate for anyone who’s confused about whether they’re allowed to like “Cholera” (because paedophilia) and/or doesn’t want to spend literally* a hundred years reading “One Hundred Years”**.
*Not literally.
**Though if you have read “One Hundred Years”, see if you can spot where one of its characters makes a cameo-by-reference.