Tony Bailie

“Will Alexander’s cascade of images, esoteric musings, Egyptology, scientific contemplations, astronomy, biology, historical injustices, and contemporary African politics swirl in this free

“This is a short novel of subtle gear changes, where the seemingly obvious plot becomes a distraction to the true narrative that builds and builds and accelerates through a shifting geograp

“A steady undercurrent of tension runs through The Frightened Ones as Suleima’s relationship with her inner world and the one around her are constantly on the point of fracturing.”

“An undercurrent of slow dread seems to permeate the small, inconsequential details of daily routine, throwing into stark relief the paranoias that are lurking close to the surface.”

"Civil wars, revolutions, invasions and fascist dictatorships formed the political backdrop that defined the works produced in Madrid over the centuries."

Nobody does Kafkaesque quite like Franz Kafka.

Falling under the category of “man drops out of society and goes off to desert to find himself,” this short novel loses direction midway through.

Overly graphic sex scenes, frayed emotions, language in translation, meditations on man’s relationship with nature and the cities or town spaces most people live in, modern Spain, government corrup

The psychological tortures that  Roberto Arlt puts his main protagonist through are on a par with those endured by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or Dmitri Karamazov.

“many of the stories have the feel of being a novel in gestation.”

“a short, funny and rather disturbing novel . . .”

“Javier Cercas is a seasoned polisher of Spain’s recent past, taking a single event or memory and rubbing at it and peeling away the dust of myth that has

Quite often it is what is not said in this novel that resonates more than what is said.

“. . . challenging but hugely rewarding—and deeply unsettling.”

“. . . an unsettling read . . .”

“Who Is that Man? is a superb dissection of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern music.”

“There are better Roberto Bolaño novels already out there, but The Third Reich stands up well and gives us an intriguing insight into how their author’s world view was informed by

A series of prose vignettes, an extended verse poem and a sequence of short meditations form the three sections of this bilingual collection.

“Each poem reaches a moment when the mood changes, a moment of epiphany that jolts the reader out of his comfort zone and the everyday shimmers slightly as perspectives shift.”

“This is an elegant novel, well-paced with dramatic twists, disturbing surprises and richly drawn characters whose actions and motives have a tangible psychological depth.”

Reading this novel could leave you with a huge hangover—the amount of alcohol consumed by its narrator and his cronies is astounding and would have floored even Charles Bukowski.

Even the most enthusiastic admirers of the late Roberto Bolaño must wonder sometimes if there is really a case for posthumously publishing everything that he ever wrote.

History seems to collide with the present and manifest itself physically in this novel. “Mountain Spirits” and even an occasional ghost also glide through the pages.

The subtitle of this collection, Stories from a Village, is slightly misleading, for while some are set in the fictional Basque village of Obaba many of them are not.

Identity and the way people develop a persona to deal with the world is the main theme of this novel.