Sketches of Spain Gala’s Jungle of Love and Aldecoa’s Enigma, Plus Holst’s Uppity Danish Women At the colossal Fnac megastore in Barcelona last month, you had to bushwhack your way past bales of Jean Auel’s The Shelters of Stone — the ubiquitously promoted tome could be had in no less than four separate editions: Catalan,…Continue Reading
One Flew Over Oslo Norway’s Fossum Gets Real, Sweden Goes Hard-Boiled, And Luna Rises Over Argentina Sweden has veered “disturbingly close to reality” in recent months as Norwegian author Karin Fossum takes the nation on a harrowing journey right up to the belfry of The House of the Insane. The book, which has been on…Continue Reading
Going Swimmingly Dawn Dives In Down Under, Mathur Rollicks In India, and Enquist Writes Rx for Germany Making a defiant splash in Australia this month is the bluntly subtitled Dawn: One Hell of a Life, the self-told tale of Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser, who was the first athlete in the world to win the…Continue Reading
Beat the Devil Coelho Back in Brazil, Mortier in the Netherlands, And Pleijel Shakes Up Sweden Brazilian high priest of letters Paulo Coelho has conjured up The Devil and Miss Prym after two years of soul searching, and the result is a half-million-copy catechism that’s been deemed a “parable in which the characters show all…Continue Reading
