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How to Make a Woman & Our Life in the Forest Marie Darrieussecq BookBlast Review

How to Make a Woman & Our Life in the Forest Marie Darrieussecq Review

September 10, 2026 Guest Contributor 0

Marie Darrieussecq exploded onto the literary scene in 1996 with her debut novel Pig Tales (Truismes). An award-winning literary multi-hyphenate, Darrieussecq’s work spans genres, style and form. Each of her books holds the potential of […]

Reading Around the World Top 5 Books of the Month

July 26, 2026 Georgia de Chamberet 0

Reading around the world this month features new releases and updated classics, taking in folklore, international fantasy, dark comedy and biography. An interior designer stumbles into a medieval parallel world; David Bowie finds reinvention in […]

Twenty Minutes of Silence Helene Bessette BookBlast Review

Twenty Minutes of Silence Hélène Bessette Review

June 18, 2026 Guest Contributor Comments Off

Kate Briggs, translator of Twenty Minutes of Silence and of Hélène Bessette’s first novel Lili is Crying, wrote in an essay for The Yale Review in September 2025: How, why, and under what material circumstances […]

The White Desert Luis López Carrasco BookBlast Review

The White Desert Luis López Carrasco Review

June 16, 2026 Georgia de Chamberet Comments Off

The White Desert is an unusual debut novel by Luis López Carrasco, expertly translated by Rosalind Harvey. Odd, unsettling and dystopian, the novel starts with nine people fleeing bombs in a hot air balloon which […]

reading around the world may bookblast diary

Reading Around the World Top 5 Books of the Month

May 24, 2026 Georgia de Chamberet Comments Off

Our monthly top 5 books roundup brings together idiosyncratic strong voices in translation, each tracking the art of survival across vastly different landscapes. Whether navigating the external terrors of a regime or the internal wilderness […]

paradiso michele masneri bookblast review

Paradiso Michele Masneri Review

April 30, 2026 Georgia de Chamberet Comments Off

Continental, classy and chic, Paradiso by Michele Masneri is an entertaining read. Federico Desideri, a young, underpaid, disillusioned journalist from Milan, is sent to Rome by his editor-in-chief at Comic Sans — “a niche magazine […]

zombie proust jerome prieur bookblast review

Zombie Proust Jérôme Prieur Review

December 16, 2025 Georgia de Chamberet Comments Off

Marcel Proust may have died over a century ago, but his legacy endures. Readers are still captivated by the way À la recherche du Temps Perdu redefined modern literature; by how Proust shows the drama […]

clemens meyer all the lights bookblast diary review

All the Lights Clemens Meyer Review

November 21, 2025 Guest Contributor Comments Off

The English-speaking world was first introduced to German author Clemens Meyer in 2011 when his short story collection All the Lights was published by powerhouse indie And Other Stories in Katy Derbyshire’s translation. A landmark […]