Andrea Camilleri’s series of crime novels, centering around Inspector Montalbano, are hugely popular in his native Italy and have been adapted for both radio and television. English-speaking readers have only been familiar with the novels for a few years, but Stephen Sartarelli’s excellent translations have been rolling of the press with satisfying regularity and The [...]
Entries from March 2008
March 15, 2008
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief was one of the literary successes of last year in the UK, although it was first published in Australia a couple of years ago. It was one of those books that was always being heavily promoted by the large book shop chains and the front cover boldly declares it as [...]
March 2, 2008
A Spy’s Life
I have to admit that I’ve never really been into spy fiction very much. When I was at school in the seventies, the BBC started serialising John Le Carre’s George Smiley novels with Alec Guinness, with great success, but whilst everyone else started reading the novels, I stuck stubbornly to crime fiction (and probably Agatha [...]
