One + one = three in Dutch author and Libris Prize winner Tomas Lieske‘s new novel My Sovereign Love about an artisan of arithmetic, his love interest, and a meddling monarch. Born in The Hague in 1528, Marnix de Veer is a mathematician, architect, and instrument-maker extraordinaire. Also a dabbler in foreign languages, he catches…Continue Reading
Frankfurt. London. BookExpo. Cape Town? The triad of must-attend book fairs may become a quadrumvirate next year after the innauguration of Barcelona and Cape Town’s own. With equally idealistic mission statements, the Saló del Llibre and the Cape Town Book Fair will finally happen after ten years and two years of planning respectively. However, claiming…Continue Reading
Italians Battle Reclusive Tenants, Food Taster Plays With Fire, Tony Soprano Takes Normandy Like an episode of House Hunters gone terribly awry, the latest offering of Italy’s Andrea De Carlo, Wind Shear, sets two well-acquainted couples (along with their trusty real estate agent) off from Milan to visit some country houses which they hope to…Continue Reading
Back by popular demand, Australia’s second annual Books Alive promotion — a two-week, federally-funded, book-buying bonanza — kicked off last month as Australian Minister for the Arts and Sport Rod Kemp officially pronounced the campaign’s motto: “lose yourself in a book and find yourself in a bookstore.” During the two week period ending August 15,…Continue Reading
Iraqi Exile in Denmark, Czech Band Beats Persecution, Chinese Memoir Smuggled to France Defining the immigrant experience is about as easy as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, yet a former Iraqi citizen now living in Denmark has penned her contribution to this genre with a “quiet, sad and nevertheless unsentimental portrayal of [her]…Continue Reading
It’s a Wonderful Double Life Hot-Buttered in Finland, Dreyfus Redux in Israel, and Watusi on the Brain in Spain Nouveau-riche restaurateur Brede Ziegler is murdered not once, but twice in No Echo, the sixth in a series of shrewdly executed detective novels from megastar Norwegian author Anne Holt. After Ziegler turns up hot-buttered and trussed,…Continue Reading
The 9th International Budapest Book Festival was bursting at the seams this year, with 600 publishers jammed into the Budapest Convention Centre from April 18-21. As some 60,000 visitors browsed 40,000 books on display, it’s no wonder that the punchy fair organizers — those being the Hungarian Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association in partnership with the…Continue Reading
