see timeline for evidence!

at your service!

it was discovered in the law section of Voltaire and Rousseau purely by chance last week!

55. According to the Law by Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara Haveland). The most deft and effective of linked story collections that leaves all the others of the last decade in the dust. The embryo of the septology is here in this quiet investigation of the sublime in the quotidian.

absolutely, the authorial frame is muddled which can charitably be read as depersonalisation but more likely just less polished and finished given where Ditlevsen was at

54. Transcription by Ben Lerner. I’m in awe of this work of subtle genius. A masterpiece.

53. Vilhelm’s Room by Tove Ditlevsen (tr. Sophie Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell). Nobody renders inner turmoil and affairs of the heart with such painful beauty.

52. The Rest is Silence by Augusto Monterroso (tr. Aaron Kern). A high literary farce about a pompous literary critic in a small town that had me laughing out loud and not just out of the awkwardness of glimpsing myself in it.

51. Art and Revolution by John Berger. A typically bracing and lucid essay examining the tension between aesthetics and emancipatory politics through the work of Ernst Neizvestny, reminding us of the necessity of a vigorous but eloquent cultural criticism.

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50. The Devil Book by Asta Olivia Nordenhof (tr. Caroline Waight). Struggling to continue the thread of the previous book, Nordenhof’s narrative reflects on the moral compromises of living under late capitalism but alchemises its unbridled rage into hope.

49. Alien Gods by Lee Suhyeon (tr. Anton Hur). Suhyeon crafts an engrossing and unsettling tale by taking the classic Lovecraftian arc and infusing it with Korean mythology.

48. Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett. Bennett is one of those writers that reads like she is only ever writing one book and it’s always a thrill to read a new chapter of it to experience her pushing up against the limits of what language can express.

excellent. looking forward to reading after hearing Rachel Kushner rhapsodise about them last year.

47. Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon. A new minor Pynchon novel is still head and shoulders above almost all other contemporary fiction and it really is a joy to read him write about central Europe once again, tracking the shadowy forces of germinal fascism in the 1930s.