Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks – The Summary

1 January – 31 December 2016

For the 2016 edition of Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks hosted by Robin of My Two Blessings on a special blog just for this annual challenge, I set myself the goal to read my way through the English alphabet of writers from A to Z (women) and from Z to A (men). It goes without saying, that I had no problem whatsoever to complete this challenge since I have been posting a review every Friday for four years now. I must admit that some of the letters – notably X and Z – have been a hard nut to crack, but in the end I succeeded in finding two authors for each of them. As usual, I alternated female and male writers, classical and contemporary works thus making my double alphabet more varied. Actually, I could include not just 52 but 53 new literary gems, some more brilliant than others, in my list of reviewed books here on Edith’s Miscellany because my review of The Man Who Searched for Love by Pitigrilli went online on 1 January. This book doesn’t count for the challenge, of course, and I haven’t included it in my alphabet.

Book Review: The Face of Another by Abe Kōbō

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Although the expression isn’t used in all languages with exactly the same meaning as in Japanese, we all feel at once that it can’t be a pleasant experience “to lose your face”. In fact, it uses to be rather embarrassing, if not shameful because the person concerned inadvertently disappoints expectations, violates social rules or commits another faux pas and thus loses respect. Sometimes “losing face” may be synonymous with “showing the true face”, while other times it may just reveal the void or confusion behind a very artful mask. In The Face of Another by Abe Kōbō the first-person narrator lost his face in a more literal sense in an accident. In three notebooks addressed to his wife he describes the psychological repercussions of the loss, expounds his thoughts on the importance of the face and explains his strategy to recover his face, to construct a new self and to get closer to his wife.

Women Challenge #4 – The Summary

1 January – 31 December 2016

This year was the second time that I participated in a reading challenge hosted by Valentina from the bilingual book blog peek-a-booK!. More precisely it was the Women Challenge #4 to which I contributed altogether 28 reviews of books written by women authors from around the world. 26 of the novels I presented here on Edith’s Miscellany as part of my personal challenge to complete a female as well as a male alphabet of fiction writers in 2016. The remaining two reviews I published on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion because they didn’t fit into my planning, one because it was too old for Edith’s Miscellany and the other because it was kind of a follow-up by the same author. As usual, I alternated contemporary works with classics dating from 1886 through 1970.

Read the Nobels 2016 – The Summary

One of the reading challenges for which I signed up in January without giving it a second thought is Read the Nobels 2016 hosted by Aloi aka the Guiltless Reader on her blogs Guiltless Reading and Read the Nobels. Now the New Year’s Eve celebrations are already around the corner (time flies!) and because only one last review will be going online in 2016, moreover one that isn’t relevant for this challenge, the moment has come to take stock of the writings from the pen of en-NOBEL-ed authors that I was able to add to my list of over 200 reviewed books here on Edith’s Miscellany.

Poetry Revisited: For Saint Stephen's Day by Luke Wadding

For Saint Stephen’s Day

(from A Small Garland of Pious & Godly Songs: 1684)

Saint Stephen had an angel's face
All full of virtue, full of grace,
By the false Jews was stoned to death,
For Jesus Christ and for his faith;
But for those stones in Heaven he found
Of precious pearls a glorious crown.

The Jews do falsely him accuse
And in their council him abuse,
Their furious rage without delay
Make stones their arms him to destroy;
And for those stones in Heaven he found
Of precious pearls a glorious crown.

The most sweet saint with his last breath
Doth pray for those who seek his death,
And leaves not off whilst life doth last,
As thick as hail their stones to cast;
And for those stones in Heaven he found
Of precious pearls a glorious crown.

Luke Wadding, O.F.M. (1588-1657)
Irish Franciscan friar and historian

Book Review: The Secret of an Empress by Countess Zanardi Landi

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Men and women claiming to be the illegitimate offspring of someone rich and powerful, notably a king or less often a queen, have been known at all times. Today a DNA test suffices to find out the truth once and for all, but until not so long ago this was different. There always remained doubts unless the assumptions were so far-fetched or the impostor so clearly out of his or her mind that nobody could take the claim seriously. Of course, some of these people will have ended in psychiatric asylums, some will just have resumed their old lives, and others will have continued their fight for being recognised as natural son or daughter with all possible means. When legal action proved useless, some resorted to… writing a book like The Secret of an Empress by Countess Zanardi Landi that brought the strange story of Elisabeth – Sisi – of Austria’s secret daughter into the world.

Back Reviews Reel: December 2013

Admittedly, it might already be a little late for a look back on my Christmassy reviews that closed the blogging year 2013. On the other hand, maybe you haven’t yet decided what to read during the upcoming holidays or you still need a suitable present for this one friend of yours whom you always forget with all that is on your mind at this time of year. The two English-language novels – one classic, one contemporary – in my review archives of December 2013 should be easy enough to find, while the third book that an expatriate Austrian wrote in English during World War II has been out of print ever since its first and only edition of 1941. My fourth read for the end of the year was the translation of a Spanish novel from 1994 and I have no idea if it’s still to be found anywhere except the library, a second-hand bookshop or a flee market.

Poetry Revisited: The Christmas Rose by Annie Matheson

The Christmas Rose

(from Love Triumphant and Other New Poems: 1898)

O Star of hope and courage, winter-bound!
Thy stem, now graced with that corolla white,
All glistening clear, as if compact of light,
Has striven through the hard and bitter ground,
And in the coarse earth vital beauty found.
Symbolic art thou of His love and might
Who did not flash, transcendent, on our sight.
But came by ways at which the dreamers frowned.
The pains that darken this, our mortal span,
The common joys, made holy, sacrificed
As God's enrichment of our sorrowing earth,—
The Son of Man has blessed for every man.
At Cana, Calvary, Bethlehem, the Christ
Has sealed as sacred, marriage, death, and birth.

Annie Matheson (1853-1924)
British Victorian era poet

Book Review: Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Most avid readers like me will know the experience. You get engrossed in a book and as you advance page by page you become ever more impressed by the power, the wisdom and the beauty of the words. And it’s only natural to long for more of it, isn’t it? Sometimes it can be sobering to read another work from the pen of the same author who caught our attention and touched us in such a way. If we’re lucky, though, further reads confirm the first impression and we become fans not just of the writings but of the woman or man who put them to paper. The narrator of Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes greatly admires the work of the nineteenth-century French writer Gustave Flaubert. During another visit to Rouen on the traces of his literary idol he becomes obsessed with finding the stuffed parrot that Flaubert had on his desk for a while in 1876.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

A History of the Book Trade:
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee 

However much we love reading, we seldom think about the book trade in general or about bookshops in particular. We take both for granted until something unexpected happens: the one-man bookshop around the corner that has been there ever since you can think closes because sales have constantly gone down and costs up; a small local publishing house files bankruptcy because it can no longer compete with transnational media companies swamping the market with cheap books; the middle-aged writer whose career you’ve been following with interest and something bordering on awe for many years sells hot dogs in the street because literary magazines don’t pay for short stories and revenues from her books are low thanks to pirated copies multiplying like rabbits on the internet. But none of this is new. The book trade has always been tough for everybody involved as shows The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee.

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Poetry Revisited: Όσο Mπορείς – Best You Can by Constantine P. Cavafy

Όσο Mπορείς (Από τα Ποιήματα: 1935) Κι αν δεν μπορείς να κάμεις την ζωή σου όπως την θέλεις, τούτο προσπάθησε τουλάχιστον όσο μπορείς: μην την εξευτελίζεις μες στην πολλή συνάφεια του κόσμου, μες στες πολλές κινήσεις κι ομιλίες. Μην την εξευτελίζεις πηαίνοντάς την, γυρίζοντας συχνά κ’ εκθέτοντάς την στων σχέσεων και των συναναστροφών την καθημερινήν ανοησία, ώς που να γίνει σα μια ξένη φορτική. Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (1863-1933) Έλληνας ποιητής, δημοσιογράφος και δημόσιος υπάλληλος

Best You Can (from Poems: 1935) And if you cannot lead your life as you wish, So at least try Best you can: do not disgrace it With too much connection with the world, With too much bustle and chatter. Do not disgrace it walking about, Often taking it and exposing it In relations and contacts To the daily madness, As to become a burdensome hanger-on. Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) Greek poet, journalist and civil servant English translation derived from Google Translate and revised by Edith LaGraziana with the help of different copyrighted translations reprinted on The Official Website of the Cavafy Archive

Book Review: The Lake by Yoshimoto Banana

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

For people who wish to be left alone and to go about their business without friends and family giving advice or commenting unasked for, the big city can be the perfect place to hide. Also for the loner it can be a veritable paradise because like any virgin forest at the back of beyond the metropolis offers solitude and anonymity, but without the need to renounce the amenities of modern existence or the option to socialise at any time. It’s the undisturbed life among strangers and casual acquaintances that both protagonists of The Lake by Yoshimoto Banana appreciate most in Tōkyo. The drifter who paints murals for her living and the graduate student focused on his studies of biotechnology only meet because they live in apartments with windows facing each other. Almost imperceptibly their nodding acquaintance changes into love stronger than the ghosts of the past that so far kept them from getting truly involved with another person.

Poetry Revisited: A Song for Saint Nicholas by Mary Mapes Dodge

A Song for Saint Nicholas

(from Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates: 1865)

Welcome, friend! St. Nicholas, welcome!
Bring no rod for us to-night!
While our voices bid thee welcome,
Every heart with joy is light.

“Tell us every fault and failing;
We will bear thy keenest railing
So we sing, so we sing:
Thou shalt tell us everything!

“Welcome, friend! St. Nicholas, welcome!
Welcome to this merry band!
Happy children greet thee, welcome!
Thou art gladdening all the land.

“Fill each empty hand and basket;
‘Tis thy little ones who ask it.
So we sing, so we sing:
Thou wilt bring us everything!”

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905)
American children's writer and editor

Book Review: The Hive by Camilo José Cela

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It’s a characteristic of the big city that there’s a constant hustle and bustle in all the central places. Around every corner seems to wait big adventure… or maybe just the daily struggle for a petty livelihood that is the inexorable fate of the masses crammed together in its less fashionable quarters. However hard the times, day in day out without fail people go about their business – because they have to – and fill the city if not with cheer then at least with life. Overall, their existence may appear ordinary and dull, but it suffices to break it down to the individual level to discover the unique, sometimes surprising and often moving stories that make it up. The Hive by Camilo José Cela, the Spanish recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature, shows the much-tried people of Madrid striving to return to something like normality after the Spanish Civil War.

Poetry Revisited: The Thrush by Edward Thomas

The Thrush

(from Last Poems: 1918)

When Winter’s ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter’s dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter – no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that’s ahead and behind.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
British poet, essayist, and novelist

Book Review: The Fig Tree by Françoise Xénakis

Click on the index card to enlarge it!

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The character of a person is never static because it continuously adapts to outside influences and (sometimes uncommon) emotional reactions to them. Such changes of attitude and behaviour use to be gradual and therefore often remain unnoticed by oneself and the immediate surroundings even when they are quite fundamental. Harsh living conditions like during an economic crisis, under a terror regime or in a war can accelerate the process and thus turn closest friends or even lovers into complete strangers if they are separated for a while. This is the experience that the two nameless protagonists of The Fig Tree by Françoise Xénakis make. They were a happy couple full of love for each other, but a highly bureaucratic terror regime tore them from each other and kept them apart for three years. During this time he went through the unspeakable horrors of a brutally run forced labour camp and she had to cope with the humiliating routines of red tape.

Poetry Revisited: Thanksgiving by Kate Seymour MacLean

Thanksgiving

(from Advent Days and Poems of Remembrance: 1902)

The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
     And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
     One after one into the lap of time.

Dead leaves are reddening in the woodland copse,
     And forest boughs a fading glory wear;
No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops,
     Silence and peace are brooding everywhere.

The long day of the year is almost done,
     And nature in the sunset musing stands,
Gray-robed, and violet-hooded like a nun,
     Looking abroad o'er yellow harvest lands:

O'er tents of orchard boughs, and purple vines
     With scarlet flecked, flung like broad banners out
Along the field paths where slow-pacing lines
     Of meek-eyed kine obey the herdboy's shout;

Where the tired ploughman his dun oxen turns,
     Unyoked, afield, mid dewy grass to stray,
While over all the village church spire burns–
     A shaft of flame in the last beams of day.

Empty and folded are her busy hands;
     Her corn and wine and oil are safely stored,
As in the twilight of the year she stands,
     And with her gladness seems to thank the Lord.

Thus let us rest awhile from toil and care,
     In the sweet sabbath of this autumn calm,
And lift our hearts to heaven in grateful prayer,
     And sing with nature our thanksgiving psalm.

Kate Seymour MacLean (1829-1916)
US-born Canadian poet and teacher

Book Review: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Domestic abuse is a sad reality and even in modern western society it’s probably much commoner than we are ready to believe. Today it may be less of a taboo to talk about it than it used to be in former times, but still many victims keep suffering in their own homes without losing a word about their ordeal even to closest friends or family. For someone who has never been in the situation it’s really hard to understand why anyone would put up with being verbally or physically attacked on a regular basis, maybe even daily and sometimes so violently that being killed is an actual possibility. Quite obviously, it’s a very complex matter psychologically. The Irish novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle shows the mixed feelings that Paula Spencer has about her husband who early on in their marriage began to beat her up ferociously and who drove her into alcoholism.

Back Reviews Reel: November 2013

Since there were five Fridays in November 2013, I had the rare pleasure to present five gorgeous reads on my blog. All of them I carefully chose for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge 2013 (»»» see my wrap-up post of January 2014 that includes the complete list of books reviewed for it) as well as in consideration of the melancholy mood of this season of commemoration. None of the books is a murder mystery, and yet, my way through the month was paved with a surprisingly great number of dead people! Three novels – two contemporary and a classical one – focus on the terror regimes in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, notably during World War II, and on the aftermaths or repercussions respectively of the period in people’s lives. The other two are a classical English satire and a contemporary Finnish book, which defies being labelled as novel or short prose collection, dealing among others with questions of old age and impending death.

Poetry Revisited: November. A Sonnet by William Cullen Bryant

November. A Sonnet

(from Poems: 1854)

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
American romantic poet, journalist,
and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post

Book Review: Cassandra by Christa Wolf

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Women in a strictly patriarchal system always used to have a hard time making themselves heard, seen and taken seriously, but everywhere in the world and at all times in history there have been some who managed despite the obstacles that society, notably men put into their way. If they were lucky, they were much respected and adored for their achievements – whichever they were. More often, though, strong and defiant women were looked at with suspicion, even fear by men and women alike. They were branded as anything ranging from madwoman over shrew to witch and they were ridiculed, locked away or even killed. In the novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf the Trojan princess and seeress from Greek legend is depicted as an unusually intelligent woman with an innate yearning for independence, but neither her family nor the people of Troy accept her the way she is and so they don’t believe her prophecies when they should.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer

When a Woman Loves a Man:
The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer 

It’s a well-known truth that love has the potential to make blind for anything unpleasant involved and at all times writers gladly took up the theme to dwell on the tangle and the suffering that results from it. In the history of literature there are scores of novels – all-time classics and probably many more forgotten ones – surrounding ill-matched couples whose relationships are doomed from the start however much they try to bridge the factual, emotional, social or psychological divide. The Jib Door by Marlen Haushofer is an impressive, though often overlooked example of an Austrian novel dealing with passionate love leading into a marriage that is based on the desperate longing to escape loneliness in a “normal” life with a husband and self-denial. First published in 1957, the primarily male critics of the time showed all but enthusiasm for the book because they had neither an interest in nor an understanding for what might be called the female condition in a patriarchal society.

read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

Poetry Revisited: Moonlight by Caroline Woolmer Leakey

Moonlight

(from Lyra Australis, or Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land: 1854)

Shine on, thou lovely moon, shine ever!
     While, like a playful child and shy,
Yon restless, struggling, leaping river
     From what it loveth best doth fly;

While are thy brightest beams o'er dancing
     Its fairy flow of molten glass,
It now to meet thee seems advancing,
     Then straightway hideth in the grass.

Faint stars, the chastened pride of even,
     It is such joy to see you blink;
As though ye still in your blue heaven
     Kindly of mortal man did think.

Oh! happy stars, ye seem to tremble,
     As with an unexpressed delight;
Why do ye thus your bliss dissemble?—
     Ye are the very joys of night.

The day may come with sun and flowers,
     With pleasant voices all around,
Like gilded garlands bring her hours,
     All ushered in to tuneful sound,

And beams, as though the orb of glory
     Were beaten into golden bars;—
The day may have a prouder story,
     But Night, she hath her moon and stars!

Caroline Woolmer Leakey (1827-1881)
English poet and novelist

Book Review: Silence by Endō Shūsaku

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Like it or not, in our modern western world we are surrounded by people from many different cultures and almost imperceptibly society changes or rather it adapts to its new composition. Many would gladly stop this cultural globalisation and build insurmountable barriers to keep immigrants out following the successful example of seventeenth-century Japan. Only decades after Western ships first reached the country, Japan closed her borders, drove most foreigners out to smother their influence (and interference) and forbade everything Western including Christian faith. Set against the backdrop of the persecution of Christians in Japan during the seventeenth century, Silence by Endō Shūsaku – that I’m reviewing for Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge X – shows a Portuguese missionary who is captured and forced to witness the cruel martyr death of his fellows in faith in order to make him apostatise. And along the way he realises that his God is different from theirs because their cultural background is another than his.

Poetry Revisited: The Hag by Robert Herrick

The Hag

(from Hesperides: 1648)

     The Hag is astride,
     This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
     Through thick, and through thin,
     Now out, and then in,
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.

     A Thorn or a Burr
     She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
     Through Brakes and through Bryars,
     O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.

     No Beast, for his food,
     Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
     While mischiefs, by these,
     On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,

     The storme will arise,
     And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
     The ghost from the Tomb
     Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
English lyric poet and cleric

Book Review: The Devourers by Annie Vivanti

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Without doubt when a baby is born, most parents hope that it will be special in every way, i.e. more beautiful, more intelligent, more gifted than average. Many mothers and fathers will even look out for the slightest sign of geniality in their offspring, and indeed, outstanding talent often shows already at an early age. It’s only natural that the proud family of such an exceptional child will do everything in its power to encourage it to live up to its potential. The best school will be chosen, additional classes booked, tutors hired to join innate talent with skill and knowledge. And here we are, setting aside own needs and desires for the sake of the child prodigy like three generations of mothers in the forgotten classic The Devourers by Annie Vivanti. Each one of the women readily changes into the role of the devoured sacrificing everything, including love and a promising future, for her extraordinary daughter.

Surprise, Surprise! A Nobel Bard

Paul Gaughin (1848-1903),
via Wikimedia Commons
Le Joueur de Guitare,
Portrait de Francisco Durrio,
c. 1900,
oil on canvas 90 × 72 cm
private collection, London

Since I’m participating in Guiltless Reading’s Read the Nobels 2016 challenge (by the way, why don’t you sign up? There’s still time for some Nobel reads this year! I’m sure that among 113 laureates you’ll find at least one to your taste. Just check my list here) and republishing regularly my Nobel reviews on the Read the Nobels blog, I was particularly anxious to know who would receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. On 13 October 2016 the spokeswoman of the Swedish Academy finally appeared before the press and startled the world with the announcement that the prestigious award will go to the American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan. Admittedly, he is known to have stood outsider chances already for some time, but who would have bet on him to actually win – ever? After all, music and literature are separate arts, aren’t they? Not as separate as it may seem at first sight.

Poetry Revisited: Herbststimmung – Autumn Mood by Marie Eugenie Delle Grazie

Herbststimmung (aus Gedichte: 1882) Ein endlos grauer Regentag... Die letzten Blätter fallen – Wie traumverloren hör’ ich Schlag Um Schlag der Uhr verhallen. Wem jemals Lieb‘ und Lenz gestrahlt, Mag nun Erinn’rung trösten, Die Zaub’rin, die so heiter malt Mit kargen Farbenresten. Und ob sein Herz auch früh verlor, Was es an Glück besessen, Man lernt durch einen Thränenflor Die Wonnen doppelt messen! Doch wen betrogen alle beid’, Der fühlt in solchen Stunden Noch herber sein unwürdig‘ Leid, Noch heißer seine Wunden… Marie Eugenie Delle Grazie (1864-1931) österreichische Schriftstellerin, Dramatikerin und Dichterin

Autumn Mood (from Poems: 1882) An endless grey rainy day... The last leaves fall – As if lost in a dream I hear stroke For stroke of the clock die away. On whom ever love and spring have shone, May now Memory comfort, The enchantress, who paints so gaily With sparse remnants of colours. And may his heart have early lost, What it possessed of happiness, One learns through an abundance of tears To measure twice the delights! But whom all both deceived, He feels in such hours Still more bitterly his unworthy pain, Even hotter his wounds... Marie Eugenie Delle Grazie (1864-1931) Austrian writer, dramatist and poet Literal translation: Edith LaGraziana 2016

Book Review: Montauk by Max Frisch

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

At one point or another in life most people look back on their past to take stock of what they did (or failed to do) or went through and of how they feel about people who were at their side during short or long periods of time. This can be a rather painful process of re-evaluation, notably when dreams remained unfulfilled and when entire chapters of the biography have never been properly closed. Some people will rail against their fate. Some will make peace with what has been and therefore can’t be changed. And others may find that they should write their memoirs, if they are born writers or not. In the autobiographical novel Montauk by Max Frisch the renowned Swiss author in his early sixties relates his short affair with a young American who takes care of him during his book-signing tour around the continent and whose presence evokes many memories.

Back Reviews Reel: October 2013

This month three years ago, the last review for My Mediterranean Reading Summer 2013 (»»» read my summary post) went online. It was dedicated to the contemporary Greek novel Swell by Ioanna Karystiani surrounding an old salt who refuses to retire from his post as captain to return to his family after over ten years at sea. I followed up with two classics. The first was a satirical farce dating from 1914 and referring to a true swindle about a false pope happened more than twenty years earlier, namely Lafcadio’s Adventures by André Gide, the French laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1947. Also the novel A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen is a classic, but a modern one from the mid-1950s dealing with the unexpected repercussions that the reappeared letters of a dead man have in the lives of three women. My final review of October 2013, was of the Austrian success novel The Wedding in Auschwitz by Erich Hackl that brings a true love story from the Spanish Civil War and World War II to the attention of the public.

Poetry Revisited: Ballade of the Optimist by Andrew Lang

Ballade of the Optimist

(from New Collected Rhymes: 1905)

Heed not the folk who sing or say
In sonnet sad or sermon chill,
“Alas, alack, and well-a-day,
This round world’s but a bitter pill.”
Poor porcupines of fretful quill!
Sometimes we quarrel with our lot:
We, too, are sad and careful; still
We’d rather be alive than not.

What though we wish the cats at play
Would some one else’s garden till;
Though Sophonisba drop the tray
And all our worshipped Worcester spill,
Though neighbours “practise” loud and shrill,
Though May be cold and June be hot,
Though April freeze and August grill,
We’d rather be alive than not.

And, sometimes on a summer’s day
To self and every mortal ill
We give the slip, we steal away,
To walk beside some sedgy rill:
The darkening years, the cares that kill,
A little while are well forgot;
When deep in broom upon the hill,
We’d rather be alive than not.

Pistol, with oaths didst thou fulfil
The task thy braggart tongue begot,
We eat our leek with better will,
We’d rather be alive than not.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and anthropologist

Book Review: On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

From afar Europe seems to many a continent of marvels where everybody can live in peace and enjoy all the amenities of modern life without having to struggle day after day. Those who come here quickly realise that reality is quite different from what they were told. Even the well-educated often find themselves at the bottom of society all of a sudden. For women this may mean prostitution. This year I already presented two forgotten German-language classics from the first decade of the twentieth century focusing on prostitutes in Germany and Austria (»»» read my reviews of The Diary of a Lost Girl by Margarete Böhme and The Red House by Else Jerusalem). The bestselling Belgian novel On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe tells the stories of four young Nigerian women who hoped to escape a life without perspective in Lagos accepting the offer of a sly Nigerian to get them to Antwerp, Belgium, and ended as sex workers.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Ravel. A Novel by Jean Echenoz

The Decomposition of a Musical Brain:
Ravel. A Novel by Jean Echenoz

There are melodies so unique that it’s enough to hear their first notes to know what is coming. Without doubt the Boléro by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is such a memorable piece of music. Although it’s a classical orchestra tune and not actually new – it premiered as a ballet in November 1928 –, virtually everybody knows it at least partly; most people will even remember the name of its French composer notwithstanding that they may never have heard any other work of his. After all, Ravel was celebrated already during his lifetime and his fame hasn’t faded since his tragic death following the desperate attempt to stop or even reverse his mental decline with brain surgery. But what kind of a man was Maurice Ravel apart from his compositions? In his short critically acclaimed biographical novel Ravel, which first appeared early in 2006, the French author Jean Echenoz evokes the last decade in the life of the musical genius starting with his 1928 grand tour of America.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

Poetry Revisited: The Fall of the Leaf by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

The Fall of the Leaf

(from The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon: 1881)

Earnest and sad the solemn tale
     That the sighing winds give back,
Scatt'ring the leaves with mournful wail
     O'er the forest's faded track;
Gay summer birds have left us now
     For a warmer, brighter clime,
Where no leaden sky or leafless bough
     Tell of change and winter-time.

Reapers have gathered golden store
     Of maize and ripened grain,
And they'll seek the lonely fields no more
     Till the springtide comes again.
But around the homestead's blazing hearth
     Will they find sweet rest from toil,
And many an hour of harmless mirth
     While the snow-storm piles the soil.

Then, why should we grieve for summer skies–
     For its shady trees - its flowers,
Or the thousand light and pleasant ties
     That endeared the sunny hours?
A few short months of snow and storm,
     Of winter's chilling reign,
And summer, with smiles and glances warm,
     Will gladden our earth again.

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (1832-1879)
English-Canadian writer and poet

Book Review: The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Just like the body ages and changes with time, emotions don’t stay the same during a whole life. Therefore the experience of love can be very different depending on how old we are when it comes over us, be it like a coup de foudre or only gradually. However much we like the idea of eternal love, we have come to distinguish between three, four or even more seasons of love with good reason. The protagonist of The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature of 1932, is a sculptor and unlike the average Englishman of his time who has learnt to appear calm and poised under all circumstances, he is full of emotions that he finds difficult to control and hide. Three times in the course of nearly thirty years he is swept away by passionate love to women who are forbidden to him because of the bonds of their or his own marriage

Poetry Revisited: Autumn: A Dirge by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Autumn: A Dirge

(from Posthumous Poems: 1824)

1.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

2.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the Year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling;
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play -
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English Romantic poet

Book Review: Twenty-four Eyes by Tsuboi Sakae

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Every war necessarily leaves painful and indelible traces in society, but people’s souls are wounded not just during the war itself. Often the suffering begins already before it breaks out and lasts until long after its end because there’s always a more or less intricate history leading to open hostility and often unexpected aftermaths emerge long after the restoration of peace. World War II is no exception there. The holocaust, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bloody battles virtually all around the world are burnt into individual and collective memory forever. But also those who weren’t directly affected by such traumatising horrors suffered, though differently, less obviously. The pacifistic novel Twenty-four Eyes by Tsuboi Sakae evokes the years before, during and after World War II as a primary school teacher and the twelve pupils in the first class that she ever taught experienced them in a small Japanese village.

Poetry Revisited: Flowers In The Dark by Sarah Orne Jewett

Flowers in the Dark

(from Verses: 1916)

Late in the evening, when the room had grown
Too hot and tiresome with its flaring light
And noise of voices, I stole out alone
Into the darkness of the summer night.
Down the long garden-walk I slowly went;
A little wind was stirring in the trees;
I only saw the whitest of the flowers,
And I was sorry that the earlier hours
Of that fair evening had been so ill spent,
Because, I said, I am content with these
Dear friends of mine who only speak to me
With their delicious fragrance, and who tell
To me their gracious welcome silently.
The leaves that touch my hand with dew are wet;
I find the tall white lilies I love well.
I linger as I pass the mignonette,
And what surprise could dearer be than this:
To find my sweet rose waiting with a kiss!

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
American novelist, short story writer and poet

Book Review: Submission by Michel Houellebecq

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

With refugees from Muslim countries streaming to Europe without end and too often without permission too, we’re living turbulent times that put politics and even democracy altogether to a hard test. Moreover, recurring terrorist attacks kindle increasingly negative feelings towards our Muslim neighbours, be they foreigners or citizens. Calls of the extreme right not to allow in any more foreigners (and even to throw out those who are here already) are growing louder every day and the number of people sharing their opinion is likewise growing as prove the results of their parties in elections virtually everywhere around. However, the times of ethnically homogeneous nations – if they ever existed at all! – are long over. Muslims are part of European society and begin to take responsibility on a political level too. With a professor of French literature as a protagonist, the 2015 novel Submission by Michel Houellebecq shows where the development could lead by 2022.

Back Reviews Reel: September 2013

My September stops on the literary journey around the Mediterranean Sea that I undertook during the summer of 2013 were Croatia, France, Syria, Italy, and a yacht cruising half of the world. To be truthfully, the French Riviera is only a secondary scene of the classic The Courilof Affair by Irène Némirovsky because it’s where the protagonist lives in exile and writes down his memories of a bomb attack in which he was involved in Tsarist Russia almost twenty years earlier. Also The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna is a novel working up a violent past, although the recent one of the genocidal war in Bosnia and Herzegovina plus adjacent areas in Croatia. The Calligrapher's Secret by Rafik Schami, on the other hand, is a story about forbidden love and the dangerous urge for modernisation in the Syrian capital Damaskus of the 1940s and 1950s from the pen of a Syrian author writing mainly in the language of the country where he has been living since the early 1970s, i.e. in German. The second classic on my review list of September three years past surrounds a Frenchman who breaks up with his fiancée during a holiday in Italy and joins the crew of a yacht in search of the mysterious man from the title of The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras.

Poetry Revisited: I Rose From Dreamless Hours by James Elroy Flecker

I Rose from Dreamless Hours

(from Forty-Two Poems: 1911)

I rose from dreamless hours and sought the morn
That beat upon my window : from the sill
I watched sweet lands, where Autumn light newborn
Swayed through the trees and lingered on the hill.
If things so lovely are, why labour still
To dream of something more than this I see ?
Do I remember tales of Galilee,
I who have slain my faith and freed my will ?
Let me forget dead faith, dead mystery,
Dead thoughts of things I cannot comprehend.
Enough the light mysterious in the tree,
Enough the friendship of my chosen friend.

James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915)
English poet, novelist and playwright

Book Review: Why Is There Salt In the Sea? by Brigitte Schwaiger

Click on the index card to enlarge it!

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

For centuries girls have been brought up in innocent and joyful anticipation of marriage and motherhood, but not seldom the expected bliss turned out to be a doom that made them long for death, the own or the husband’s, to put an end to pretending, enduring, and suffering. In our modern days girls know more about the reality of married life and their future no longer depends on finding good husbands to provide for them. They have a true choice, while most young women born shortly after World War II were still expected to follow the examples of their mothers instead of the just emerging new female role model that required great will-power and a thick skin. Having grown up in a small Austrian town of the 1960s, the petty bourgeois protagonist of Why Is There Salt in the Sea? by Brigitte Schwaiger chooses the conventional and easy way into marriage... to find that she can’t bear it.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict

The Variety of Standards of Human Behaviour:
Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict

Confronted with other cultures or just life-styles we all tend to be rather judgemental classifying the one as primitive, the other as aggressive, yet another (usually our own) as civilised, and so forth. Moreover, we use to think in the categories of good and evil like we who were born into an environment marked by Christian-European customs and values have been taught from early childhood. However, what seems perfectly normal behaviour to us may look completely absurd or even immoral in the eyes of a person socialised in a different culture... and vice versa. For many centuries Westerners – almost as a rule – looked down on other cultures. Not even scientists exploring all corners of the world were free of this arrogance. It is thanks to anthropologists like Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) and her likes that today we seek a wider and less biased picture. In her 1934 book Patterns of Culture she brought the then relatively new approach to the attention of the public.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

Poetry Revisited: The Indian by Elizabeth Kirkham Mathews

The Indian

(from Poems: 1802)

Alone, unfriended, on a foreign shore,
Behold an hapless, melancholy maid,
Begging her scanty fare from door to door,
With piteous voice, and humbly bended head.
Alas! her native tongue is known to few:
Her manners and her garb excite suprise;
The vulgar stare to see her bid adieu;
Her tattered garments fix their curious eyes.
Cease, cease your laugh, ye thoughtless vain;
Why sneer at yon poor Indian’s pain?
’Tis nature’s artless voice that speaks:
Behold the tear bedew her cheeks!
Imploring actions, bursting sighs,
Reveal enough to British eyes.

Elizabeth Kirkham Mathews (1772-1802)
British poet, novelist, and schoolteacher

Book Review: Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In August 1945 the USA used their “pretty terrific” new weapon, the atomic bomb, to force Japan to capitulate at last and to thus end the Pacific War. As we know today, the horrible attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that cost hundreds of thousands of lives not just in the moment of the explosion but in many decades to come was rather a demonstration of power than a necessity to stop the fighting since Japanese troops couldn’t have prevented the American invasion much longer, anyways. For the twentieth anniversary of the bombs, starting in January 1965, the literary magazine Shinchō (新潮) published the novel Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji in instalments. This month fifty years ago, appeared the final part of the book surrounding Shigematsu Shizuma who five years after the Hiroshima bomb copies eye witness reports like his niece Yasuko’s and his own diary entries to keep memory alive for future generations.

Poetry Revisited: Szeptember végén – At the End of September by Alexander Petőfi

Szeptember végén (a könyvből Osszes költemények: 1847) Még nyílnak a völgyben a kerti virágok, Még zöldel a nyárfa az ablak előtt, De látod amottan a téli világot? Már hó takará el a bérci tetőt. Még ifju szivemben a lángsugarú nyár S még benne virít az egész kikelet, De íme sötét hajam őszbe vegyűl már, A tél dere már megüté fejemet. Elhull a virág, eliramlik az élet... Űlj, hitvesem, űlj az ölembe ide! Ki most fejedet kebelemre tevéd le, Holnap nem omolsz-e sirom fölibe? Oh mondd: ha előbb halok el, tetemimre Könnyezve borítasz-e szemfödelet? S rábírhat-e majdan egy ifju szerelme, Hogy elhagyod érte az én nevemet? Ha eldobod egykor az özvegyi fátyolt, Fejfámra sötét lobogóul akaszd, Én feljövök érte a síri világból Az éj közepén, s oda leviszem azt, Letörleni véle könyűimet érted, Ki könnyeden elfeledéd hivedet, S e szív sebeit bekötözni, ki téged Még akkor is, ott is, örökre szeret! Koltó, 1847. Szeptember Petőfi Sándor (1823-1849) magyar költő, forradalmár, nemzeti hős

At the End of September (From All Poems: 1847) The garden flowers still blossom in the vale, Before our house the poplars still are green; But soon the mighty winter will prevail; Snow is already in the mountains seen. The summer sun's benign and warming ray Still moves my youthful heart, now in its spring; But lo! my hair shows signs of turning gray, The wintry days thereto their color bring. This life is short; too early fades the rose; To sit here on my knee, my darling, come! Wilt thou, who now dost on my breast repose, Not kneel, perhaps, to morrow o'er my tomb? O, tell me, if before thee I should die, Wilt thou with broken heart weep o'er my bier? Or will some youth efface my memory And with his love dry up thy mournful tear? If thou dost lay aside the widow's vail, Pray hang it o'er my tomb. At midnight I Shall rise, and, coming forth from death's dark vale, Take it with me to where forgot I lie. And wipe with it my ceaseless flowing tears, Flowing for thee, who hast forgotten me; And bind my bleeding heart which ever bears Even then and there, the truest love for thee. Koltó, September 1847 Alexander Petőfi (1823-1849) Hungarian poet, revolutionary and national hero Translated by William N. Loew in: Gems From Petőfi and Other Hungarian Poets, Paul O. D’Esterhazy, 29 Broad St., N.Y., 1881

Book Review: In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The first half of the twentieth century saw many changes, notably with regard to society. By the end of the Great War of 1914-18 courageous women – disapprovingly called “suffragettes” – had claimed already for some decades not yet equality with men but at least more rights. The great majority of women, however, kept following quite naturally the traditional female role model that tied them to a man, be it a husband, father, brother or other male relative, and confined them to what we call the three K’s in German, namely “children” (Kinder), “kitchen” (Küche) and “church” (Kirche). Young Natalia, the protagonist of the much acclaimed Catalan novel In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda, is one of them. She lives in Barcelona of the 1930s and becomes the docile wife of the Joe who does whatever he likes without considering Natalia or their children, even when it’s the question of risking his life in the Spanish Civil war.

Twelve Decades, Twelve Languages – Twelve Books!

Earlier this month I read a review of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell on Stephanie Jane’s Literary Flits and it brought to my attention that the Bookcrossers’ group on GOODREADS has called another Decade Challenge starting on 1 September 2016. To make it clear from the start: I’m not into bookcrossing. I must not read (not even have anywhere near me) books that went through too many hands unless I’m ready to put up with burning eyes, a sour throat and a running nose – I’m allergic. It goes without saying that feeling unwell isn’t exactly what I wish to get out of literature! However, I like the idea of the GOODREADS Bookcrossers Decade Challenge and decided to sign up for its 2016/17 edition. And it goes without saying that I set out right away to make a list of my projected reads, one book for each decade from 1900 to now, each originally written in a different language to make it more difficult. As I advance, I'll add the links to my reviews.

Here's my list:

Poetry Revisited: A Voyage in the Rocking Chair by Frances Wynne

A Voyage in the Rocking Chair

(from Whisper!: 1893)

Rocking Chair
(courtesy of Waylin/pixabay)

A quaint, old room, full of firelight glow:
     Warm glint and gleam, a shadowy wall,
     Showers of vivid red sparks that fall—
                    The rocking-chair swings low.

A long, gold, billowy sweep of sky:
     Between that wondrous glory and me,
     Flickering leaves on a poplar tree—
                    The rocking-chair swings high.

Now seems the world of the work-a-day
     A dim coast-line, that lessens and dies.
     Dreamily blissful, I sink and rise
                    With quiet rhythmic sway.

My pilot, Peace, brings me safe to far
     Ideal Land. I drift with the tide,
     Up the still waters that lie inside
                    The shining harbour bar.

Frances Wynne (1863-1893)
Irish poet

Book Review: The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We all know – if not from own experience, then from what we see, hear and read every day – that the years of adolescence are an enormously formative period of life. Moreover, they can be a terribly confusing and difficult time for the youths. They are even harder for a boy who grows up surrounded mostly by women, moreover Jewish ones in 1950s England, and who happens to be so shy that he is blushing virtually for no reason and that he prefers to hide on the toilet for hours on end. As a woman in my mid-forties I can relate only to some of it, but this is the life that the scarcely teenage protagonist of the award-winning comic novel The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson has until an unexpected talent for table tennis opens a whole new world to him and eventually even allows him to study in Cambridge.

Poetry Revisited: On Summer by George Moses Horton

On Summer

(from The Hope of Liberty.
Containing a Number of Poetical Pieces: 1829)

Esteville fire begins to burn;
The auburn fields of harvest rise;
The torrid flames again return,
And thunders roll along the skies.

Perspiring Cancer lifts his head,
And roars terrific from on high;
Whose voice the timid creatures dread;
From which they strive with awe to fly.

The night-hawk ventures from his cell,
And starts his note in evening air;
He feels the heat his bosom swell,
Which drives away the gloom of fear.

Thou noisy insect, start thy drum;
Rise lamp-like bugs to light the train;
And bid sweet Philomela come,
And sound in front the nightly strain.

The bee begins her ceaseless hum,
And doth with sweet exertions rise;
And with delight she stores her comb,
And well her rising stock supplies.

Let sportive children well beware,
While sprightly frisking o’er the green;
And carefully avoid the snare,
Which lurks beneath the smiling scene.

The mistress bird assumes her nest,
And broods in silence on the tree,
Her note to cease, her wings at rest,
She patient waits her young to see.

The farmer hastens from the heat;
The weary plough-horse droops his head;
The cattle all at noon retreat,
And ruminate beneath the shade.

The burdened ox with dauntless rage,
Flies heedless to the liquid flood,
From which he quaffs, devoid of guage,
Regardless of his driver's rod.

Pomacious orchards now expand
Their laden branches o’er the lea;
And with their bounty fill the land,
While plenty smiles on every tree.

On fertile borders, near the stream,
Now gaze with pleasure and delight;
See loaded vines with melons teem –
'Tis paradise to human sight.

With rapture view the smiling fields,
Adorn the mountain and the plain,
Each, on the eve of Autumn, yields
A large supply of golden grain.

George Moses Horton (1798–1883)
African-American poet

Book Review: The Conductor by Sarah Quigley

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Undeniably, every war affects the civilian population in many ways and to varying degrees. It’s inevitable. And the closer people live to the front lines, the greater is the danger that they will find themselves run over by the enemy or even by their own troops. If there is time they will flee as far away from the fighting as they can, but if it’s a big city and if they live under a rigid regime like Stalin’s Soviet Union this option may be refused them. If they are lucky, it’s all soon over. If they aren’t, they have to struggle for survival under siege as was the case in Leningrad (today again: Saint Petersburg) during the winter of 1941/42. In The Conductor by Sarah Quigley the musicians of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra who are caught in the city by advancing German troops strive for some kind of normality despite hunger and cold.

Back Reviews Reel: August 2013

On my literary summer tour of three years ago (»»» see the summary of My Mediterranean Reading Summer 2013), my August reads – three classics and two contemporary novels – took me not just to five different countries at the Mediterranean Sea but also back in time.

Amazingly altogether three of the books were set in the decades around 1900, namely firstly, the novel Jenny by Sigrid Undset (the winner of the 1928 Nobel Prize in literature) that traces the life of a young free-spirited woman during a stay in Rome, Italy, for studies and later back home in Christiania (today: Oslo), Norway, secondly, the novel Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher dealing with the effects that isolation and danger in a small community in the Egyptian desert have on an (unwanted) Egyptian police officer and his Irish wife, and finally, the Austrian novella Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig in which a distinguished Englishwoman tells the author her unusual adventure with a gambler in Monte Carlo, Monaco. The coming-of-age novel Nada by Carmen Laforet, on the other hand, is set in Barcelona, Spain, in 1939 and its protagonist is a young woman from the province arriving in the city to study at university. And last but not least, Small Wars by Sadie Jones evokes the fight for independence from the British Empire on Cyprus in the 1950s.

Poetry Revisited: To A Lady Who Said It Was Sinful to Read Novels by Christian Milne

To A Lady Who Said It Was Sinful to Read Novels

(from Simple Poems on Simple Subjects: 1805)

To love these books, and harmless tea,

Has always been my foible,

Yet will I ne’er forgetful be

To read my Psalms and Bible.

Travels I like, and history too,

Or entertaining fiction;

Novels and plays I’d have a few,

If sense and proper diction.

I love a natural harmless song,

But I cannot sing like Handel;

Deprived of such resource, the tongue

Is sure employed — in scandal.

Christian Milne (1773-1816)

Scottish poet