Realpolitik Redux Aguinis in Argentina, King’s Ransom in Denmark, and Slobo’s Serbian Adventures With the world reeling from the 1994 bombings of the Israeli embassy and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association in Buenos Aires, a Moslem scholar and a young and impulsive journalist join forces to prevent future attacks in Argentine author Marcos Aguinis’…Continue Reading
Duck and Cover Fowl Play in Argentina, Penelope Unbound in Spain, And Birdsell’s Back in Canada Argentina’s “official historians” are quacking away over the latest provocation from historical novelist María Esther de Miguel, titled The Palace of the Ducks. The book carries forward the author’s “generally transgressive” history of Buenos Aires and adapts a detective…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
Parisian Pandemonium Vargas Plagues Paris, Orsenna’s French Lessons, And Brouwers Skewers Dutch Boomers The specter of bubonic plague coming down the mail chute rattles all of Paris in an uncannily topical work by the French archaeologist and crime writer Fred Vargas. In the author’s latest novel, Leave Quickly and Return Late (which, incidentally, was written…Continue Reading
