‘Fumes’, the first tale in this short story collection, opens with a description of a blizzard. A young man, called Ozarski, who we are told is an engineer, has been separated from his colleagues by a snowstorm. As evening sets in, he quickens his pace in the hope of finding shelter for the night. Trundling […]

If one was to ask an enthusiastic reader with an interest in classic European novels for a list of their favourite books, it is likely that one would hear the same names rattled off, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Zola, a lot of Russian and French authors, maybe the odd novel from Scandinavia or Italy. It is […]

A brief description of Drifting’s plot could easily lead one to think that is it a short minor work, only worth the time of academics and completists. This would be a mistake, as this little book creates a vein of characteristic Huysmans black comedy. I would go as far as to place it amongst my […]

Familiarity with Huysmans in the English-speaking world is usually limited to but one book, À rebours. A quick look through the catalogues of publishers of classics in translation reveals numerous editions of this one text, whilst the rest of Huysmans’ oeuvre is the purview of Dedalus. One might go even further in saying that Huysmans […]

Alphonse Daudet (1840-97) is chiefly remembered today for his collection of short stories Lettres de Mon Moulin, ‘Letters from My Windmill’, winsome bucolic pieces set in Provence. He occupies a place in French culture with Marcel Pagnol, similar to the place occupied in English Literature by Laurie Lee and Flora Thompson. However a quite different […]

I occasionally find myself writing down the impression I have of a book before reading it. This might sound rather odd, but there have been times when I find myself a hundred pages through a novel and I find myself appraising the book, not on its merits, but on how it compares with an impression […]

What inspired you to write about the War of Roses? I have loved the late Middle Ages since childhood – the world conjured up by Malory in the Morte d’Arthurand later by Huizinga in the Waning of the Middle Agesand in T.H. White’s tetralogy the Once and Future King. I love the colour, flamboyance and […]

Visiting another country always means confronting the information and presuppositions about it that you have. I could not say what other people’s associations with England are. They may associate it with the Beatles or Mr. Bean. When I look at the postcards which are being sold in England, most of them present the Houses of […]

In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem ‘Autumn: A Dirge’ the month of November is the first month during the course of a year that equals certain sadness which lasts until the spring. Nature is dead and the speaker wishes for the chilly and dark months to pass. Indeed, it may seem that November brings about melancholy […]