Walk on the Wild Side Sophie’s Choice in Sweden, Saddam Does Denmark, And Russia’s Crime Babe Rides Again The co-creator of the longest-running Swedish soap opera in history sends white-hot sparks of sensuality shooting over Scandinavia this month with “a clearly political manifesto disguised as an entertaining literary soap.” In Stars Without Vertigo, now bounding…Continue Reading
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
Blowin’ in the Wind Grandes Gusts in Spain, Bewitchery in Greece, And Crazy Birds Flutter Aloft in Israel Breezes, gales, gusts, and tempests swirl like suspicious characters through this month’s bestselling Spanish novel Difficult Airs, the latest effort from well-known erotica queen Almudena Grandes. The author’s fifth novel sets out to map the meaning of…Continue Reading
The Travolta Generation Swingin’ Sweden’s Gardell, Finland’s Eager Readers, And Greece’s Turk in the Garden One of Scandinavia’s sassiest stand-up comedians drenches himself in “sweaty randiness and lonely searching” this month with A UFO Makes an Entry, a second novel by Jonas Gardell about the star-crossed generation that grew up in the suburban 1970s, weaned…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
Trading Places Guillou Turns Publisher, Potter Imposter in Spain, and Bridget Jones Down Under The prolific writer-turned-publisher Jan Guillou has commandeered the top three slots in Sweden this month, all of them part of his journey through the Middle Ages. At the top of the heap is the third in his trilogy based on the…Continue Reading
