For the last few years, I've been aware of Robin Jenkins's books, notably his best known work, The Cone Gatherers, as they were perennials on the Scottish Books shelves of local stores. Of the man, however, I knew nothing and was surprised to find that he died as recently as 2005. Surprised for the silly [...]...

At the beginning of Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler there is a passage on the various types of books we meet in our lives, such as those we haven't read, those we needn't read, and those we plan to read. One of the more obscure categories is books that fill you [...]...

Although it was his first novel, Vladimir Nabokov's Mary (1926) was not translated until 1970, and one can well imagine the author peering over translator Michael Glenny's shoulder as he rendered the Russian into English, suggesting changes here, le mot juste there. Either way, it all comes down to an apprentice piece by Nabokov that [...]...

Following on from the 25th Anniversary 'Booker Of Bookers' in 1993, comes the 40th Anniversary 'Best Of The Booker', in which a panel of judges have saved the public the bother of whittling down all forty-one eligible titles to a more manageable six. Or, to put it another way, ensured that Life Of Pi, which [...]...

Whittled down from over 100 titles to a longlist of 17 announced in January, the titles were again reduced in March to a final 6. And now, in a ceremony this evening, the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced. The 2008 Prize has gone to Paul Verhaeghen for his own translation [...]...