Foreign Authors

Surely there's at least one good Norse writer at work these days, no?

I've never been one to read literature press and reviews though, so I'm woefully ignorant about what goes on at the moment around the world. Doesn't really feel like I need to follow it, as my to-read list will last me for years and years already anyways.

Most of what I've ever read has been foreign fiction - I've never really enjoyed British novelists on the whole. Maybe it's just the attraction of the exotic, but Brit novelists strike me as a little blinkered and provincial. But there are obviously plenty of exceptions to that...

For starters.

I'm Passing Open Windows:

Anything you suggest by Yasunari Kawabata - Kobo Abe - Ha Jin - Natsuo Kirino? Ha Jin sounds like a Chinese name, no? Who's the guy who won the nobel, Oe?

Is that who you mean?

What's Xingjian like?

" Mein Eheman; ein Leben " ( "My Husband; A Life " )

For some reason Mrs. Ethelfreda Batthingthwaite- Winterbotham wrote this fascinating book in German; and although she could speak perfect English asked me as Head of the Treborth School of Useful German Phrases, Intergalatic Navigation and Oriental Cookery to translate. The following report is reprinted from the
" Little Peover Weekly News and Mid Cheshire Digest"

"Well known Local Authoress and Magistrate Resigns after Court Case"

At Prescott Magistrates Court, near Liverpool; on 18th March, 1999; Ethelfreda Batthingthwaite-Wintebotham of Little
Peover ,Cheshire; an unemployed Jehovah’s Witness " Watchtower " Magazine Door- to-Door Sales Person and JP, pleaded guilty to Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred and attempting to pervert the Course of Justice. In an agreed statement the Crown Prosecution Service claimed that on 1st April, 1998;she had placed a £ 5 bet with William Hill Bookmakers at odds of 14 Million to One that by the end of the Year 2,000; the White House would be destroyed by a Flying Saucer piloted by Elvis Presley, claiming to be a Reincarnation of the Prophet Mohammed. The Bookmakers had used the Bet in advertisements and when they were displayed in a betting shop next to a Mosque in Manningham Road , Bradford; the local Muslim Population staged a riot lasting 3 days; in which 14 white persons properties and the Local Jehovah’s Witness Hall were destroyed by fire, with an estimated replacement cost of £ 8.3 M ; and 215 members of the Police and Fire Services were injured, 8 seriously. The bet was traced to Mrs. Batthingthwaite-Winterbotham, by CCTV tapes; but when she was interviewed by the Police, she claimed she had innocently placed the bet on behalf of her Husband, Attila Batthingthwaite- Winterbotham, a redundant Toothbrush Handle Hole Borer of the same address. Her Husband was arrested and charged , and she subsequently admitted her story was untrue. She was fined £200 with £85 costs and bound over to keep the peace for 2 years. Outside the Court, Mrs. Batthingthwaite-Winterbotham claimed she was not motivated by racial or religious hatred, but that it was an April Fool Joke to try and cheer her husband up. He had recently been made redundant from his job as Foreman Toothbrush Handle Hole Borer when his factory , where he had worked for 25 years; had been closed down and converted to a Hindu Temple. She denied he had filed divorce proceedings; and was proud of her husband, who was a skilled craftsman in a declining once great British Industry; and also denied she had done it as a publicity stunt to publicise her recent book " My Husband; a Life."

Mrs. Batthingthwaite - Winterbotham has been asked by the Lord Chancellor to resign from the local Magistrates Bench, where she hads served for 20 years,

I always have a niggling feeling when reading translations that I'm (or the translator is) missing something. That said, I like Banana Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginsberg, Ignazio Silone, GG Marquez...

I have no idea, I've never met him. Haven't read anything by him either but I've heard his work referred to as "tedious".

That's Ingvar Ambjørnsen. I've only read "Hvite niggere", which I didn't like at all. Aside from that, I must admit to only really know him through all his TV-appearances and the movies based on his books (ie those lame "Pelle & Proffen" teenage crime fighters ones, plus the nifty Elling)
I've read the first pages of a few of his books, but never felt any urge to go on with them, and don't know anyone who hold him in high regard either.

Thanks for the heads-up on Xingjian. Based solely on the high esteem in which I hold most of the I-Love-Bookers, I shall avoid him until I am in need of soporifics.

Read 'Platform' on the plane home from Paris the other year and loved that it gave me the opportunity to muse, vis a vis my neighbor, that her Judith Krantz had nothing on MY book.

"You couldn't bring me a coffee," he said, and Pasha, seeing that problem as good as solved, betook himself to the stove."

I mean, come off it; this is a contemporary novel. The best translators, like waiters, are unobtrusive.

Arundhati Roy is highly recommended; 'The God of small Things.'

Sorry for my solipsism. I slightly redeemed myself by referring above to foreign language authors. Funny about 'The God of Small Things', I've found that people either love it or hate it. There's something about her prose style I find un-readable.

But "My name is Red" is also a meditation on interaction of western and islamic cultures, as the ancient islamic art of "illumination"
faces the overwhelming challenge of new western idea's like perspective.

A beautiful and original book.