Last week, Freight Books read...

Death and the Penguin is wonderfully surreal. Victor, the protagonist, is a an aspiring writer living on his own in a flat in Kiev. Well, nearly on his own. There is also the Penguin, Misha, who Victor bought from the zoo when they were strapped for cash after the break-up of the Soviet Union. They live together quite happily, Victor feeding Misha frozen fish and Misha shuffling about sounding rather depressed. 

Then Victor gets a job writing obituaries for a newspaper and things change. Suddenly he has steady money, and even makes a friend or two, but the the people he is asked to prepare obits for start to die. Misha gets a job too, as a silent companion at funerals. 

If that hasn't got you intrigued then I don't know what is wrong with you. It is great. I've yet to read any more by Andrey Kurkov, but he has jumped to the upper reaches of my shopping list. 

Last week, Freight Books read...

From the Mouth of the Whale, by Sjón and translated by Victoria Cribb, will not be to everyone's tastes, but I found this to be a great read, filled with the visceral trappings of a time when Science and Magic were often thought to be the same thing. The year is 1635, and though Iceland is under the rule of Denmark it is a long way from anywhere. The main character, Jónas, has been exiled to a remote island off the coast of this remote island - just about as far as a man can be pushed without discovering a new continent. His crime is his intelligence (he is a self-taught healer), his heresy (a Catholic in a country where Protestantism has taken sway) and that he has earned the enmity of the local magistrate.

As he languishes on his island, he writes about his life, and through that we hear about the nature of the land. We learn of the deaths of three of his children, of the brutal murder of Basque fishermen, and of the harsh lives eked out on the edge of the world.

Jónas is then taken from his exile to Denmark, where opportunities suddenly flourish around him, but I don't want to give too much away here. There are some beautiful touches to this novel - the search for dead ravens in the hope of retrieving a life-giving stone from their heads (as reported in the classical texts of Paracelsu), the unveiling of unicorn horns sold throughout Europe to be the teeth of narwhal, and the exorcism of a walking corpse.

Victoria Cribb has done a brilliant job of  translating this book. It flows with lyrical poetry, but retains those harsh edges, like a sea wind blowing over marram grass.

I take it back, this should be to everyone's tastes because it is beautiful and brilliant.

Last week, Freight Books read...

War with the Newts is weird yet wonderful. Sold as a humorous allegory of early 20th Century Czech politics, I was expecting to have my knowledge of Slavonic history stretched to breaking point, but couldn't resist the title nor the cover artwork. If there were any specific references to Czech politics they passed me by. The novel contains allusions to the League of Nations, the slave trade, and imperialism, but you could get away with not knowing about any of those things.

A sea captain looking for pearls comes across a colony of giant newts. He teaches them how to protect themselves from sharks, and in return they collect pearls for him. This relationship soon becomes one of exploitation, as the newts are the perfect form of cheap labour, but as a new age of prosperity begins for mankind nobody notices how fast the newts are breeding...

On the whole a good read, which I banged through quickly. If it was to be your first foray into Czech literature, however, I would counsel you to read Closely Observed Trains, I Served the King of England, The Good Soldier Svejk or The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Last week, Freight Books read...

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is, so far, one of the best books I have read this year. A tale of an extraordinary man looking for one last adventure, there is a back story running through the book that channels the Good Soldier Svejk whilst at the same time critiquing Sweden's stance of neutrality over the last century. And above all this politicking there is a varnish of beautiful prose that makes the book flow almost too fast, despite it's length. A fantastic translation, a great book, well worth a purchase.