Published in 1923, and the fifth winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Riceyman Steps is Arnold Bennett’s thirtieth novel. Set in Clerkenwell in London, it tells the story of Henry Eralfor…

Published in 1923, and the fifth winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Riceyman Steps is Arnold Bennett’s thirtieth novel. Set in Clerkenwell in London, it tells the story of Henry Eralfor…

Despite having overflowing bookshelves and a mountainous TBR, I still always seem to amass multiple copies of individual titles, and today’s book is a good example of that. Back in the 1990s …

Slowly but surely, I’m working my way through Anita Brooker’s exquisitely written novels in publication order – they really are jewel-like in construction. First published in 1996, Altered States i…

Praised by Raymond Chandler as one of the best suspense writers of her era, the American writer Elisabeth Sanxay Holding produced eighteen crime novels and many short stories over the course of her…

As anyone who has come to love a writer who writes in a language you do not read knows, you are at the mercy of translators and publishers. If you are honest with yourself, you accept that certain …

As anyone who has come to love a writer who writes in a language you do not read knows, you are at the mercy of translators and publishers. If you are honest with yourself, you accept that certain …

A roundup of books I read in July and August 2026 including several titles for WIT Month.

Jean Echenoz opens his tribute to his longtime editor and publisher, with an account that many other hopeful, and perhaps naïve, would-be authors might know well.  It is 1979, he has just turn…

If there’s ever a book which had me wanting to rush off to northern climes, it’s “An Island Rooing” by Joan Grigsby! The latest release from Michael Walmer in his Northus Sh…

If you follow Nora (Pear Jelly) on Bluesky or Instagram, you’ll know that she’s currently hosting #SpinsterSeptember, a themed reading event showcasing books featuring unmarried women, from the cla…

Over ten years since This Should Be Written in the Present Tense was translated into English, we finally have a second novel by Danish author Helle Helle, they. Similarly translated by Martin Aitke…

By the wine-press house, the road turns offto the right, I see low village roofs through the mountains, on roads burnished blue,I’m a stranger here, for I intrude no one in sight, only acacias, vin…

Over ten years since This Should Be Written in the Present Tense was translated into English, we finally have a second novel by Danish author Helle Helle, they. Similarly translated by Martin Aitke…

I love Barbara Pym, an underappreciated writer whose gentle comedies of manners and unrequited love among the genteel middle classes are charming and quietly poignant. She creates an idiosyncratic …

Sometimes a book crosses your path at exactly the right time, and that happened to me recently when I was browsing in a British Heart Foundation charity shop. As I mentioned in my August round up, …

Agnes Lidbeck’s debut novel, Supporting Act, translated by Nichola Smalley in 2025, was a probing examination of motherhood and the gendered expectations placed on women. Now, thanks to the same tr…

Agnes Lidbeck’s debut novel, Supporting Act, translated by Nichola Smalley in 2025, was a probing examination of motherhood and the gendered expectations placed on women. Now, thanks to the same tr…

Brian Moore’s fifth novel, I Am Mary Dunne, first published in 1968, draws on James Joyce’s Ulysses and, perhaps more urgently given its female perspective, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, to presen…

Brian Moore’s fifth novel, I Am Mary Dunne, first published in 1968, draws on James Joyce’s Ulysses and, perhaps more urgently given its female perspective, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, to presen…

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1901, Nina Berberova emigrated from Russia to the Weimar Republic in 1922, where she lived for three years before moving to Paris. While in France, Berberova wrote poems…

Repetition is the sixth and latest novel by Vigdis Hjorth to appear in English thanks to her usual translator Charlotte Barslund. Previous novels have alternated between dysfunctional romantic rela…

Repetition is the sixth and latest novel by Vigdis Hjorth to appear in English thanks to her usual translator Charlotte Barslund. Previous novels have alternated between dysfunctional romantic rela…

First published in 1958, The Bell was Iris Murdoch’s fourth book, a sophisticated, richly textured novel that explores complicated feelings between complex individuals, encompassing faith, guilt, r…

Today, for Women in Translation Month, I’m showcasing six books by women writers in translation, all published in the UK by Daunt Books. Daunt has a long tradition of supporting writers from across…

Abigail by Magda Szabó is a gripping boarding school novel that explores themes of female friendship, war, and resistance in the Hungarian countryside.

Balsam Karam’s Event Horizon predates The Singularity, the first of her novels to appear in English, also translated by Saskia Vogel. Both draw on her experience as a Kurdish immigrant, leaving Ira…

Balsam Karam’s Event Horizon predates The Singularity, the first of her novels to appear in English, also translated by Saskia Vogel. Both draw on her experience as a Kurdish immigrant, leaving Ira…

Widely regarded as one of the most influential Catalan writers of the 20th century, Mercè Rodoreda was born and raised in Barcelona. At the tail end of the Spanish Civil War, she fled into exile, s…

Sharp and unsentimental, the prose of Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen crackles across the page, exposing the painful insecurities of ordinary people as they navigate the often messy experiences of lif…

Groundhog Dane