Books I Have Read (And Some I Intend To)
I’ve gone through the Guardian’s list of 1000 novels you must read to find the ones I actually have read. Italicised books await my attention. I’ve kept them under the Guardian’s groupings....
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Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2007 The story of the manuscript of Suite Française is remarkable. That Némirovsky completed as much of it as she did in the aftermath of the German invasion of 1940 – she was a Russian émigré...
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The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky
Translated from the French, Le Vin de Solitude, by Sandra Smith. Chatto and Windus, 2011, 248 p. First published by Éditions Albin Michel, 1935. Hélène Karol is the only child of Bella and Boris Karol....
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Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky
Chatto & Windus 2007, 153 + xvi p. First published by Editions Denoël, 2007. Translated from the French Chaleur du Sang by Sandra Smith Most of the handwritten manuscript for Fire in the Blood had...
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The Dogs and the Wolves by Irène Némirowsky
Chatto & Windus, 2013, 216 p. Translated from the French Les Chiens et les Loups by Sandra Smith. First published by Éditions Albin Michel, 1940. Of the four Némirowsky novels I have now read this...
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Le Bal by Irène Némirovsky
Chivers, 2008, 142 p. Translated from the French by Sandra Smith. The good lady noticed this (very) large print book in a local library. As every Némirovsky I have read so far has been excellent I...
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Jezebel by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2010, 199 p. Translated from the French by Sandra Smith. © Éditions Albin Michel 1940. First published in English as The Modern Jezebel by Henry Holt and Company 1937. I hadn’t intended...
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Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd
Bloomsbury, 2012, 429 p. Actor Lysander Rief (whose mother is Austrian) travels in 1913 to Vienna (where else?) to seek a cure for his unusual sexual dysfunction from fellow Englishman Dr Bensimon. At...
View Article2014 in Books Read
The ones that stick in my mind most – for whatever reason – are:- Signs of Life by M John Harrison Mr Mee by Andrew Crumey Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald The Deadman’s Pedal by Alan Warner A Scots Quair...
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The Fires of Autumn by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2015, 318 p. Translated from the French Les Feux de L-automne by Sandra Smith. First published by Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, 1957. Returned to a threatened library. The Fires of Autumn...
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The Misunderstanding by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2013, 162 p, plus iii p Translator’s Note and iv p Preface to the French Edition. Translated from the French Le Malentendu by Sandra Smith. This short novel, originally published in 1924, when...
View Article2016 in Books
The best of what I read this year, in order of reading. 13 by men, 8 by women, 1 non-fiction, 5 SF or fantasy, 12 Scottish:- Ancient Light by John Banville The Secret Knowledge by Andrew Crumey Clara...
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David Golder by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2007, 159 p plus xii p Introduction. Translated from the French (Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1929) by Sandra Smith. This was Némirovsky’s second novel and in it she was to some extent finding...
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All Our Worldly Goods by Irène Némirovsky
Chatto & Windus, 2008, 206 p. Translated from the French Les Biens de ce Monde by Sandra Smith. (First published by Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, 1947.) I have frequently alluded to love, sex and...
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The Courilof Affair by Irène Némirovsky
Vintage, 2008, 174 p. Translated from the French L’Affaire Courilof, (Éditions Grasset, 1933,) by Sandra Smith. The narrative here has a prologue set in Nice in the 1920s which acts as a framing device...
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Bookshelf Travelling for Insane Times – Translated Fiction
Time for Reader in the Wilderness’s meme again. These shelves contain my paperbacks of fiction translated from languages other than English. Evidence here of my usual suspects – Bohumil Hrabal, Mario...
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