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Doppler by Erlend Loe

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Doppler

A tent, an elk, and an existential crisis

Doppler is sick of his nice life with his nice wife and nice children. Sick of toeing the line and being a passive consumer in Oslo society, chasing money in a city bloated with oil wealth. Also, his father is dead and it hurts. A bump on the head from a cycling accident prompts an epiphany, and in a clever, satirical skewering of modern life, Doppler by Erlend Loe chronicles Doppler’s desertion of his family, in exchange for a tent in the Norwegian forest, where he will take up contemplation of modern existence in the devoted company of a very small elk.

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My Husband by Maud Ventura

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My Husband

Crazy in love

A French publishing sensation and winner of the Prix du Premier Roman, My Husband by Maud Ventura is an unnerving tale of manipulation and control. Narrated by a seemingly devoted wife, it gives us seven days in her marital life, a rollercoaster of a week as she veers between doting on her beloved husband, setting traps to test his love, and punishing him when he falls short of her lofty romantic ideals. Occasionally creepy, often crazy, Ventura’s page-turner imagines the potential pitfalls of a scenario where the intensity of one (unbalanced) spouse’s love burns as brightly as it did on their honeymoon night a full fifteen years before.

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Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Kairos

Fatal Attraction

A coincidental meeting on an East Berlin bus changes the life of 19 year-old Katharina forever. Across the steamy bus, she catches the eye of Hans, a married author and journalist 34 years her senior. They start an intense clandestine affair, but as passion turns to obsession, the relationship descends into something dark and unescapable. In Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck, one of Germany’s literary superstars, their psychological drama is played out in parallel with the political drama of the fall of the Berlin wall.

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Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

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Out Stealing Horses

Beautiful Norwegian novel of memory and acceptance

Approaching his twilight years, Trond Sander has fulfilled a lifelong yearning for rural solitude; a small house in the farthest reaches of eastern Norway, with a dog and the radio for companionship. The 21st century is hovering into view but Trond has no plans for Millennium celebration, instead anticipating a mellow, boozy evening in front of the fire. His new resolve to inhabit only the present moment is upended by the shocking appearance of a character from Trond’s past. In Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, a reckoning is long overdue with the psychic wounds and repercussions of childhood tragedy and loss.

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The Pledge by Freidrich Dürrenmatt

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The Pledge

An eerie crime novel with a twist

I have to confess to not being a big consumer (or fan) of crime fiction (perhaps I just haven’t read enough good ones), but this intense and eerie little book got the better of me. Written in the 1950s, The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, a Swiss dramatist and novelist, is a crime novel with a twist designed to challenge the formulaic (according to Dürrenmatt) nature of the genre.

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The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli

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The Wizard of the Kremlin

Inside the mind of Vladimir Putin

Ever wondered what goes through Vladimir Putin’s mind? How he and his cronies see the world? We’ll never know for sure, of course, but in The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli we get a what appears to be a pretty good guess. Da Empoli worked as Italian ex-Prime Minister Renzi’s advisor and spent some time in Russia. This best-selling, Prix Goncourt nominated novel is his fictionalised account of Putin’s rise up the ranks. A must read for anyone interested in Russia and geo-politics.

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How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum

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How to Love Your Daughter

 Maternal mania

The first time Yoella lays eyes on her young granddaughters, it is through the window panes of their Groningen home. Having travelled thousands of miles to see them, she is hiding in the gathering dusk of their front garden, concealed and mesmerised. In the prize-winning How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum, Yoella retraces the painful path that has led to estrangement between herself and her only child, Leah. Setting the reader the compelling task of unpicking her account and assessing the silences, Yoella’s story is one of intense introspection and all-consuming love.

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Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

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Tokyo Express

A unique brain teaser

One chilly January morning in 1957, a man discovers two dead bodies on a Japanese beach. A young woman in an immaculate kimono and a gentleman with polished shoes. Curiously, both corpses are rosy cheeked, an anomaly explained away by the police doctor as a sign of cyanide poisoning. It’s almost certainly a classic love suicide pact, but in Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto, we’re reminded to challenge even the most elementary assumptions, particularly when one of the deceased is a government official implicated in a bribery scandal. A meticulously (some might say obsessively) plotted 1958 Japanese crime classic, it’s a deliciously knotty read.

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My Men by Victoria Kielland

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My Men

Lyrical journey into a murderous mind

Brynhild is seventeen and in love. She’s been told many times that she needs to know her place, and she does. By day, her place is in the kitchen as a housemaid, but by night it’s in the feverish embrace of the master’s eldest son. Quiet and pious, she is awaiting God’s blessing of their love. God, of course, has other plans, and in My Men by Victoria Kielland, we watch as Brynhild morphs into Belle Gunness, the murderous owner of a dark ‘carnivorous heart’. Based on the true story of America’s first known female serial killer, it’s an intense and mesmerising affair.

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Owlish by Dorothy Tse

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Owlish

Surreal and subversive tale of repression and identity

Professor Q is a somewhat dull academic, apathetically teaching literature at a middling university and uninterested in his wife, Maria. She, in turn, is just grateful that Q appears to have lost any carnal urges. Supposing that the andropause has come for him, Maria is unaware that her hitherto predictable husband is in love with a mechanical music-box ballerina. Her name is Aliss and he is willing her to life. Both a political allegory and a deep dive into the recesses of the human psyche, Owlish by Dorothy Tse is a subversive and exhilarating affair.

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