Nov 22 2025
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai belongs to the branch of literature that’s more “do unusual things with words” than “tell a story.” I picked it up on a recent trip to Frankfurt because Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/22/a-mountain-to-the-north-a-lake-to-the-south-paths-to-the-west-a-river-to-the-east-by-laszlo-krasznahorkai/
Oct 05 2025
Where Miklos Banffy spends nearly 1500 pages of his Transylvanian Trilogy chronicling the life of Hungarian nobility across their half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil compresses much of the experience of the Austrian half into less than a tenth of that in a tale of life in a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/05/die-verwirrungen-des-zoglings-torless-by-robert-musil/
Sep 27 2025
No Longer at Ease follow Things Fall Apart a generation later, although that is not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that Obi Okonkwo is in a heap of trouble. He is in the dock, on trial in a case that has been the talk of Lagos for weeks, and the only thing remaining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/27/no-longer-at-ease-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 25 2025
Containing graphic adaptations of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. When I was in my 20s, I dated a guy who loved Haruki Murakami and Paul Auster. Those weren’t the reasons I dumped him, but they should have been signs. And it’s not like I didn’t try my darnedest either! I did get …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/25/paul-austers-the-new-york-trilogy-by-paul-karasik-lorenzo-mattotti-david-mazzucchelli/
Sep 21 2025
Things Fall Apart grabbed me from its very first page, even though nearly 70 years have passed since its first publication. It had fallen into the category of reputed classics that I have never quite gotten around to, what with there being a lot of books both old and new, and if not for the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/21/things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/
Aug 27 2025
translated from the original Kurdish by Sami Hezil. It feels a little strange to be talking about a(nother) book on the subject of the legacies of the departed, especially since this definitely takes the opposite tack of yesterday’s What Happens After? That book talked about grief and acceptance, whereas this speaks of guilt and vengeance. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/27/lovers-of-franz-k-by-burhan-sonmez/
Aug 16 2025
The battle lines of the Italian campaign in World War II have moved northward from the outskirts of Florence. In a villa once owned by the Medici and then the Jesuits, lately used as a hospital by the Allies, two people remain. One is a nurse, a young Canadian woman who has been tending soldiers …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/16/the-english-patient-by-michael-ondaatje/
Jul 10 2025
In all earnestness, the teenaged narrator of this affecting novel desperately needs sports. A sport, any sport: even a sedentary bookworm like myself can recognize that the kid has too much energy and too few healthy outlets. The kid in question is Armie Bernal, the son of two semi-famous writers who divorced when he was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/10/the-agonies-by-ben-faulkner/
Jun 25 2025
Translated from the original German by Michael Hofmann. It’s weird: this book smells to high heaven of being very firmly Literary Fiction, one of my least favored genres, yet I really enjoyed it. There were definitely parts where the narrator has a thought process so decidedly masculine that I scoffed at the idea of her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/25/in-a-deep-blue-hour-by-peter-stamm/
Jun 04 2025
Do you believe that books come to you when it’s the right time for them? That doesn’t mean that you’re going to read them and immediately connect: and there’s a lot to be said for coming to books like Catcher In The Rye and the more dire works of Anne McCaffrey as an adult, when …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/04/madame-sosostris-and-the-festival-for-the-brokenhearted-by-ben-okri/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire