He Who Laughs Last Fontanarrosa Grabs Guffaws, Shades of Scorsese in Italy, And Germany’s Answer to Oprah Pull up a barstool and lend an ear to the simply Seinfeldian comic strip artist and author Roberto Fontanarrosa, whose latest book, You’ll Never Believe Me, is stirring up all manner of giggles and guffaws in Argentina this…Continue Reading
Women’s Work Poland Gets the Menses, Millás Sizzles Spain, And Hareven Labors for Love in Israel Serotonin levels are plunging this month all over Poland, where the delightfully demented author Janusz Wisniewski comes down with Tense Syndromes (otherwise translated as Premenstrual Syndrome; the original title was Menstruation, but the Warsaw publisher deemed it “too shocking”),…Continue Reading
The Darnedest Things Swedish Kid-Savants, Greece’s Sippable Fiction, And Pilch Toasts All of Holland A wave of mourning sweeps over Sweden this month with the passing of Astrid Lindgren, mother of Pippi Longstocking, though her spirit lives on in the mischievous Swedish bestseller of the moment, Old Ladies Don’t Lay Eggs. This zinger of a…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
Crime and Punishment King Bites the Bullet, Crime Pays in New Zealand, and Carvalho’s on the Case in Spain In a somewhat bizarre development, Stephen King’s hotly downloaded e-novella Riding the Bullet has shot around the globe — in a bricks-and-mortar edition. Though hard-copy versions of the work were originally ruled out by the K-man,…Continue Reading
