Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

April 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Translated from the Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 1997. 192 pgs. Purchased. In 1991, a jar filled with scraps of paper was discovered buried in Kaunas, the former capital of Lithuania. The papers document nearly three years in Dalia Grinkevičiūtė after she deported to a Soviet gulag in Siberia in 1941 at the age of fourteen with her mother and older brother. Grinkevičiūtė had buried the papers in 1950, fearing they would be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

Children of The Cave by Virve Sammalkorpi

March 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 176 pgs. Purchased. In 1819, Iax Agolasky travels to northwest Russia as the research assistant to a well-known French anthropologist and explorer named Jean Moltique. The goal of Moltique’s exhibition is to locate lost or ancient tribes in the region, and their search leads them to a cave in the Russian wilderness where a small group of children live. Moltique believes […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Virve Sammalkorpi

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin

March 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Turkish by John W. Baker. AmazonCrossing, 2013. Originally published 2002. 395 pgs. Free download. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Selva married Rafael Alfandari, a Jewish man whose family settled in Turkey after being expelled from Spain in 1492. Neither the Alfandari family nor Selva’s parents, Fazil Resat Paşa and Leman Hanim, support the marriage and, after being cutoff, Selva and Rafael flee to Paris in the hopes of finding a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Middle East, ReadDiverse, Translated, Turkish • Tags: Ayşe Kulin

The Shadow Killer by Arnaldur Indriðason

March 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Minotaur Books, 2018. Originally published 2016. 304 pgs. Library copy.  Amid the American and British occupation of Iceland in 1941, a man is founded murdered in a small apartment in Reykjavík – a swastika drawn across the victim’s forehead with his own blood. When the murder weapon is determined to an American-issued service pistol, a Canadian-Icelandic military officer by the name of Thorson is loaned out to the Icelandic […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Iceland, Icelandic, Translated • Tags: Arnaldur Indriðason

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part Two)

March 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. This post includes my thoughts on Part Four through the Epilogue of Dostoyevsky’s most famous work. For my thoughts on Parts One through Three, please see this post. As the end of Part Three, the main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov had awoken to find an unknown yet aristocratically dressed man standing over […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

February 22, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Hebrew. Harper, 2015. Originally published 2011. 541 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind”, Harari’s book covers three “revolutions” that shaped the course of history – the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution – before delving into a lesson in how culture binds the world together and a short speculation about the future. Beginning about 70,0000 years, the Cognitive Revolution led to the evolution of Neanderthals and other […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Chunkster, Economics, Europe, Hebrew, Indigenious Peoples, Middle East, Nonfiction, North America, Religion, South America, Translated, United States • Tags: Yuval Noah Harari

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part One)

February 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. Arguably Dostoyevsky’s most famous work, Crime and Punishment is divided into six parts plus epilogue. Given the novel’s length and (assumed) difficulty in reading, my book club decided to split the book at the halfway mark and discuss it at two meetings. Our February meetup covered Part One to Three, which […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

January 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Hebrew. Harper, 2017. Originally published 2015. 450 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “A Brief History of Tomorrow”, Harari’s book draws on his knowledge as a historian, explaining how homo sapiens have come to dominate the world — physically and philosophically. In the physical realm, for example, homo sapiens have domesticated animals for consumption. Philosophically, such actions are justified through claims that God granted them dominion over animals or that animals are unable to construct meaning to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Hebrew, Technology, Translated • Tags: Yuval Noah Harari

The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indriðason

December 28, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Minotaur Books, 2017. Originally published 2013. 304 pgs. Library copy. During the 1940s, when Reykjavik served as a staging ground for the American military invasion of Europe, a young woman is founded murdered behind the National Theater. The area around the theater is known as the “Shadow District”, and the devious behavior conducted there often occurs without punishment. But this murder — and the American serviceman seen fleeing from the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Iceland, Icelandic, Translated • Tags: Arnaldur Indriðason

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

December 23, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Japanese by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. Amazon Crossing, 2018. 174 pgs. Free download from Amazon. Subtitled “One Man’s Escape from North Korea”, Ishikawa’s memoir is quite short – five chapters plus an epilogue – but it comprises one of the more moving and informative first-hand accounts of life in North Korea that I’ve encountered. I want to highlight the label of Informative because this the only book I’ve encountered that looks at […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Japan, Japanese, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Masaji Ishikawa

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

December 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2010. Originally published 2006. 125 pgs. Library copy. In January 1943, a young, pregnant woman named Margherita takes a walk through the streets of Rome. Such a walk would be unremarkable where it not for the fact that she came to Rome to be with her husband, a member of the German Army fighting in North Africa. Her German nationality affords her certain benefits in Rome – a […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Italy, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Friedrich Christian Delius

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

December 13, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 2015. 196 pgs. Purchased. In Ikstena’s novella, the title refers to the emotional and physically nurturing (not) offered by the oppressive, political regime of the Soviet Union in present-day Latvia. A nameless mother and her nameless daughter serve as the narrators and central focus of the novella with Ikstena following them from 1969 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Latvian […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, Latvian, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Nora Ikstena