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Showing posts with the label The Invention of Morel

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

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Thank you to Emma @ Word and Peace for a copy of this interesting novella. Head over to her blog to read her interesting review (link above).  Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) was an Argentinian fiction writer, and this is his most well-known work. It is a fantastic story, and wonderfully written. It was published in 1940, but its story seem to belong to a more modern world.  We don't know very much about the narrator. Only that he is a fugitive and needs to hide somewhere. "An Italian rug seller in Calcutta told me about this place. He said (in his own language): "There is only one possible place for a fugitive like you - it is an uninhabited island, but a human being cannot live there. Around 1924 a group of white men built a museum, a chapel, and a swimming pool on the island. The work was completed, and then abandoned." Our narrator manages to get to the island, in spite of the rug seller's description of the diseases pestering it and all the horrors that are...