Nawal el Saadawi is a feminist, novelist, poet, playwright, political activist, doctor, teacher, mother, daughter. She has a formidable intellect, is courageous, forthright and controversial. This reader brings together el Saadawi's writing from the past thirty years
READ MORE

Although Amélie Nothomb has been a prolific and acclaimed author for nearly twenty years now, it is only comparatively recently that English translations of her books have started to appear. Now, at last, Hygiene and the Assassin, her 1992 debut novel, is available to English speakers for the first time. I had never read Nothomb before and, given her reputation as a difficult, challenging and even dangerous writer, I started reading with some trepidation.
READ MORE

Ana María Shua's Death as a Side Effect is a perfectly pitched, darkly comic satire, set in a dystopian near-future Argentina. Politicians perform comedy routines on television, the streets are no-go areas, infested with gangs of marauding vandals, and neighbours are strangers, drowning out evidence of each others' presences with blaring music.
READ MORE

Wow! Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is big news in Russia, but was little known in the English-speaking world before the publication of this collection by Penguin in 2009. I hope much more of her work is published in English, because, on the evidence of this collection, she is a stunningly good writer.
READ MORE

Indelible Ink is like a time capsule. Topical references abound including the recent global financial crisis as it affects these Sydneysiders. Mostly, though, this is a very Australian novel.
READ MORE