roughghosts

[roughghosts]

Latest #IFFP Review The law of being average F: A Novel by Daniel Kehlmann

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In it for the money : My Prizes—An Accounting by Thomas Bernhard

In recent weeks, talk, at least in the literary circles I circle, has turned to literary prizes and prize winners, more explicitly to the question of the use of AI to at worst generate complete stories or at best, toss ideas around in the creation of said stories. So, wanting a fresh, pre-artificial intelligence take on the matter of awards honouring writers and artists, I naturally thought of…

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A few thoughts on twelve years of blogging

Roughghosts is twelve years old today. I debated whether or not I would officially mark this day with a post as I typically do, but have decided as the day nears an end, to say a few words anyhow. My immediate thought was to comment on the ongoing gnashing of teeth about the death of book reviews which always seems to go hand in hand with blaming the decline on book blogging. It seems to me that…

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“I don’t know, Heinz, are you the one or aren’t you?” My Mother’s Silver Fox by Alois Hotschnig

The past is so long ago. A lot is certain and clear—there are documents. But I was only a few years old at the time, so it’s difficult: I only know what I experienced physically. That I do know. But the paths, the detours we followed, even the ones I was there for, those I have to imagine. Heinz Fritz grows up haunted by a past filled with mystery, secrets, ghosts. He is the son of a Norwegian…

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Of poets and prophets: Ah!merica by Allen Ginsberg

The latest offering from isolarii, the unique publishing venture that produces small—think palm-sized—“island books” that feature the work of novelists, scientists, artists, theorists, and philosophers and others. But don’t let the small scale fool you, these micro-masterpieces can pack a punch. The latest, their sixteenth title, is Ah!merica by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a meditation on the…

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A jay in the grass is a turning point in history: In a Cabin, in the Woods by Michael Krüger

There must be a crack in the fabric of the house, the candle flickers as if it can’t decide, and the piece of paper on which I’d been scribbling all day long, trying to find a beginning, lies on the floor, butter-side down. But the doors and windows are all tightly closed. A beginning of what? —from poem #13 When we look back now at those eerie early months of the pandemic, when we all retreated,…

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Of beggars and kings: The Abyss by Jeyamohan

This is not a novel that eases you in slowly, gradually revealing its excesses. Rather, the truth of the situation at hand is immediately on display. Grotesque and disturbing, the first few chapters can make for uncomfortable reading. It is not simply the event taking place, but the attitudes that surround it, the relationships and circumstances that are swiftly and bluntly made clear. In a hut…

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The earth was a rose fully opened: Eternidades / Eternities (1916–1917) by Juan Ramón Jiménez

My feeling and the star were ecstatic in their idyll. You passed through the garden and your hand, playing, paying no attention, tore off my feeling. (poem 107, “Flower”) Winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, Juan Ramón Jimenez (1881–1958) is widely regarded as one of the most important Spanish language writers of the twentieth century. But, as is often the case, the popularity of his…

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Patience is life: Gold Dust by Ibrahim al-Koni

“We always say that the Mahri is the mirror of his rider. If you want to stare into the rider and see what lies hidden within, look to his mount, his thoroughbred. Now that I look at you more closely, I can see that you’re a young man who’s got everything. Whoever owns a Mahri like this piebald will never complain for want of noble values. You’ve honored our homes, O noble youth descended from…

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In praise of ordinary people: Maybe Even Happiness by Ludovic Bruckstein

Imagine a travelling fair in a small provincial town, complete with all of the expected food stalls and amusements. And there, amid the festivities, stands a small unassuming structure with a sign advertising it as a panoptikum—a wax museum. But when our narrator steps inside, there are no heroes or historical figures waiting for him. ‘What is this?’ he wonders: But because I have handed over my…

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A fragmented inventory of being: Fourteen Ways of Looking by Erin Vincent

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A catalogue of farewells: Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko

. . . I want to record all this, I want to write down that everything is all right, the end of the world is behind us anyway, no machine guns in sight, only the signs of another oncoming flood, it’s early, and at the other end of the train tracks she’s gradually woken up by the seagulls, and the room in which she opens her eyes looks different, in her slumber she may not even comprehend  what’s…

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There goes a happy woman: The Grandmother by Božena Němcová

The premise of the novel regarded as a classic of nineteenth century Czech literature is as simple and unassuming as its title. An old woman enjoying a quiet life in a mountain village surrounded by friends receives news that her eldest daughter is returning to Bohemia from Vienna where she has lived for many years now that her German husband has taken on a position in the service of a princess…

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And she ruled: Queen by Birgitta Trotzig

Through the darkness swept the beam. Capturing – releasing: capturing  – releasing. So deep the darkness when the light released its grip, like falling down through a well, darkness, no end; sleepers were struck by the light as if by a knife; again darkness, all the while they were on their way into darkness downward and downward, whirling, falling. Without pause the lighthouse beam swept across…

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Even in these half-dark times: The World Is Made Up Every Day by Alok Dhanwa

The lights on the bridges have no end My nights are full of them I will remember the lights even in the face of death – from “Theatre”  (1996) In recent years, Seagull Books has been bringing the work of under appreciated Hindi cult writers to English audiences, via the translations of Saudamini Deo. The latest writer to receive this attention is  Alok Dhanwa whose defiant and socially engaged…

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“at nightfall, the night herons no longer called”: Chronicles of a Village by Nguyễn Thanh Hiện

these are the chronicles of my village, the vessels of remembering and reminiscing, tale upon tale of yesterday, yesteryear, yestercentury or yestermillennia, now plainly precise, now hazily adrift, an abundance, or maybe an overabundance of news that reads like some kind of a novel, some kind of novella or some kind of essay reshaped into fictional form, they, the news, the chronicles,…

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The church that falls again will rise again: A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness

This is the story of a church, one that exists whether it is standing or not. Standing high above the Mosfellsdalur Valley in southwest Iceland, not far from the nation’s capital, Mosfell Church has,  at the time of the telling of the story—mid-twentieth century—been recently rebuilt, but it holds a history of rising and falling that reaches back a thousand years. Somewhere along the way it…

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