Angels and Oasans: Knausgaard and Michel Faber

 

We’re getting in early with our top 10 reads for 2014.

Gert’s writing room, Knausgaard and Finnegans Wake in Mandarin

 

A description of Gert’s writing room appears on The Next Best Book Blog http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com.au/

Our mate Karl Ove Knausgaard heads the shortlist for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize:       http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/08/karl-ove-knausgaard-short-stories-on-independent-foreign-fiction-prize-shortlist

And the first print-run (8000 copies) of a Chinese translation of the first third of ‘Finnegans Wake’  has sold out within a month, propelled by a massive billboard campaign on buildings and freeways throughout China, The London Review of Books (April 3) reports. But it might be a while before avid Chinese readers get their hands on the rest. When asked when it would appear,  the translator, Dai Congrong, said, ‘May God give me the courage to finish it.’

 

Boyhood Island – Karl Ove Knausgaard

The third volume of Knausgaard’s My Struggle is out, to predictable controversy. “A masterpiece for the age of the selfie,” says Anthony Cummins  (The Observer, Sunday 23/14); John Crace subjects it to one of his masterly take-offs – “Writing about writing. Writing about not writing. Who cares which when the bandwagon’s rolling?” (The Guardian, 24/3/14), and Hari Kunzru muses on how hard it is to get a grip on how compelling the books are “because much of it appears painfully banal.”(The Guardian (8/3/14)