Hungary - Metropole - Ferenc Karinthy

Book history

-Need to reseach

Story.

Finds himself in a new city 

Weird doorman,

Likes the lift attendant she invites him to the roof for her smoke break

Visits a prostitute but just sit and tries to communicate 

Visits abattoir, court and then a church, goes up to the dome for a view of the city.

-Half way-

Long descriptions of language history.

Sees a man with a Hungarian magazine in he metro, they shout Hungarian at each other but get swept apart.

Gets more involved with the lift attendant, and it's amusing how he refers to her has a different name each time.

They end up having sex, then he beats, but breaks down apologetically and then has sex again.

Doesnt pay his hotel bill so is kicked out. Doorman physically throw him out.

Becomes a tramp.

Tries the hotel again, get kicked out by the doorman and then he stumbled into a room with people being rialed up and given weapons. He gets involved in a kind of military cous or renegade operations. Turns into a full blown skirmish with tanks and grenades and lots of death.

Takes cover in the metro.

The final short chapter he wakes and finds lots of the damaged repaired or boarded up and everone acting as if nothing had happened the night before.

He finds a lake with a a run off stream and is filled with hope that the stream will lead him eventually to the sea and his freedom. 

And that's how the book ends, with his vision of freedom after finding a tiny outlet stream.

Estonia - The Man who spoke Snakish - Andrus Kivirähk

Estonia - The Man who spoke Snakish - Andrus Kivirähk

another find whilst do a bit of a research session.

Looks a lot more like fantasy or folk lore rather than Sci Fi

Ukraine - Elana Gomel - The Crytids

 found this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C91X3GLB/?coliid=I20ZUCDU9A2AQ7&colid=34JE9HFDP3DZ3&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it_im

not purchased it yet still doing research on Ukraine

Also found this:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/BOdfEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjmwLOGnaaPAxVY0AIHHXD_KJUQ7_IDegQIERAC

Spain - Typescript of the Second Origin - Manuel de Pedrolo

Found with a bit of googling and reading this article: 

http://www.concatenation.org/europe/spanish_science_fiction.html

and ordered a copy of Typescript of the Second Origin by Manuel de Pedrolo

Portugal -  Blindness - José Saramago

This book was recommended to me by Seth Heasley who hosts two great podcasts; Take me to your reader and Hugos There. So a huge thanks to Seth.

..

I ordered a copy from my local bookstore, Dormouse Books in Belper, which came an a couple of days.

I had only briefly researched Portuguese science fiction, and found a short story published online, but not found this, and there may a reason for this which i'll talk about later.

The book started off really strong with a very descriptive scene of a man loosing his sight whilst waiting at traffic lights in his car. from the first scene and the first few pages it had me hooked and it had a very similar feel to the Brazilian book I read called: and still the earth. I am never very ken on comparing books, but there was just a familiar feel to them both. Maybe its a language thing, maybe a cultural thing, or maybe just pure coincidence.

The book was such a bleak story of a blindness pandemic, and the book followed the lives of a small group of people in a detention / quarantine center. The book was graphic and pretty disturbing in places, but the sense of bleakness and failure of morality and disintegration of basic human kindness was chilling, mainly because it seemed really quite realistic.

There were some points in the book, where it seemed unrealistic, but maybe that was my lack of empathy with the characters. One of the oddest thing about the whole story was that the names of the characters were never disclossed, it was always; 'the doctor, or ;the lady with the glasses'. This was very odd to start with, but I soon got used to it. During the story, it was commented that blind people don't need names.

Overall a great book, not sure that it is science fiction, it is dystopian, and the reason for the contagious blindness isn't explained. So, to me, this is right on the border of what i would consider science fiction

Slovakia - The Science of the Stars - Gustav Reuss 

Malta - Lucifer's Dragon - Jon Courtenay Grimwood

I googled Malta Science Fiction, after finding out one of my customers spent a lot of her childhood in Malta, as her father was posted their with the British Army. Grimwood was the only science fiction author I found that was born in Malta. So this was a lucky find

Found a copy of the book of Amazon for £3.50 so that was a nice win, and despite my dislike of Amazon it was the easiest and cheapest option..I know you should never judge a book by its cover. But the cover of this book is appalling. Its the the kind of cover I would pass over straight away. BRIGHT orange with green text boxes. Really didn't give off a science fiction vibe. And the name also, 'Lucifer's Dragon', it sounds like a fantasy book, and i'm not really a fan of fantasy book. But i do absolutely love a Song of Fire and Ice series of book. So this book sat on my shelf for a long time and other books over took it on my To Be Read pile. But i finally got round to opening it up and I've found quite enjoyable

Republic of Ireland - The Cloud of Desolation - Sam Baneham

So my history with this book is a pretty good story. After reaching out to a guy called Damo, on the science fiction book club FaceBook group asking him about Irish Science fiction from the Republic of Ireland. Damo came back recommending Cloud of Desolation, but warned me it was a very rare and therefore pretty expensive book. This project has taught me that searching for books all over the internet is quite good fun and i'm getting pretty good at it. Damo was super generous and offered to lend me a copy of his book, but i also really like collecting physical copies of the books for this project too. 

I eventually found a copy in a small 2nd hand online bookshop based in Ireland, so I purchased a copy from them. The owner was super friendly and sent me a few emails about delivery times and prices. The book went past its due date by a week or so, so I emailed the book store owner, who was very apologetic and went on a mission to kick the couriers ass and get the book into my hands. The owner did the job and book arrived a couple of weeks later on the 11th Aug 2023.

Denmark - Data of death - Johannes Allen

This book was found via this rather amazing profile on twitter https://twitter.com/Rcordas. When I saw this profile and the most amazing spreadsheet that has had so many hours and hours put into it. collecting and recording hundreds and hundreds of translated science fiction and speculative fiction works!

After a little browsing through the wonderful spreadsheet I sorted the Novels tab by country of origin and scrolled down. I notice Denmark on the list. Denmark. I had searched for Danish sci fiction authors before. Mainly because I had search for Greenland science fiction authors, and Greenland is owned by Denmark, which brings up all kinds of decisions about what I can and can not tick off this list. But anyway, I have found a Danish science fiction author! After a little googling I found the below amazing independent book shop and ordered a copy: https://www.booklovers.co.uk/bookid.asp?ID=107570

I can't find any information on Johannes Allen on the internet, which is a bit frustrating, as if would be interesting to find out some more about him, and his career. 
 

 

Portugal - Research

 

31st Jan 2023 

Bit of evening googling turning up João Barreiros and a translated short story of his:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/silent.htm so if i ever do need to start reading short online stories rather than printed physical book. More reseach will continue in the hope of a proper book.

Latvia - Research

 26th Jan 2023

Sometimes the journey is just as much fun as the book I find at the end. I had a bit of time after doing my self assessment for the HMRC, and my laptop was up and running and sat on my knee. So i went to the BIG LIST and looked at the gaps in the countries i'm searching for. At this point i'm still mainly focusing on Europe, not sure why, maybe because I am European.

So any way I started with googling "Latvian Sci Fi". not much came up from the usual suspects of goodreads,com and wikipedia but I did find a really interesting article on Science Fiction In Latvian Literature (Link to a PDF). So I'll send the author of the research an email thanking them and asking for any recommendations for this project.

After another fifteen minutes of searching I came across Pauls Bankovskis and his book '18'. This does seem to be only very loosely defined as a science fiction book, as it does point towards the possibility of time travel. So this book is now a contender, but is firmly on the 'Plan B' list, as the search continues for a Latvian book that is more distinctly sci fi or science fiction!

After another fifteen minutes I've come across Tom Crosshill, who has a few sci fi short stories published online that have been Nominated for Nebula awards. These also make it onto the Plan B list, as I'm still avoiding short stories, and they feel a bit like cheating! And I think once I open the door on short stories, this project may just become a box ticking exercise. But, who knows how i'll feel about that tomorrow! Right. bed time!

Luxembourg - Ralph 124C 41+ - Hugo Gernsback

So I came across this book after a customer of mine had visited Luxembourg and that made me think about sci fi books from this small European country that rarely gets mentioned outside of the Euro-vision competition. Anyway, upon googling Science Fiction authors from Luxembourg I discovered Hugo Gernsback is from Luxembourg! I don't even know who Hugo Gernsback is! Turns out the Hugo award for science fiction and fantasy books are named after HUGO Gernsback! I had assumed, wrongly, that they were named after Victor Hugo! So this was instantly ordered and not long after it was received in the post. When the book arrived I posted by assumption and discover of the book, authored by the award's namesake

The Netherlands - YLO - Nicholas Clare

Recieved!v This wasn't hunted out or gifted! The author hiimself saw a post on a Science Fiction Book club Facebook group we are both part of. I had posted about by search for books from around the world, and Nicholas let me know he is a Sci-Fi author from The Netherlands! BOOM a visit to his website and a couple of emails later I have a signed, first edition winging its way to be added to my collection!

This kind of interaction and making these contacts has been some of the most fun parts of this project. So this book is leap frogging other books straight to the top of the reading pile. A review will be coming as soon as I've read it!

Iceland - LoveStar - Andri Snær Magnason

This was a perfect holiday book, a week in the sun with the family. I managed to sneak a few hours of reading in each day and was engrossed in LOVESTAR. Some of the quoted praise for the book compared the author to Orwell, Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, which piqued my interest as they are some of my favourite authors. However, I think that was just some lazy reviewing. Don't get me wrong, the book is great and deals with a light-hearted weird dystopian future, buts that's where the comparisons end.

This does tick some of the boxes of the types of books I wanted to discover when setting out on reading books from authors from all around the world. It was originally written in Icelandic, set in Iceland and touches on Icelandic culture and history.

The story it's self has some pretty fun and slightly disturbing visions of the future. One thing that I didn't particularly like was the way it went to huge amounts of detail about how the technology in the future was developed. This is a personal preference and not a dig at the book. Im happy to accept technology. If I want to know more I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about that piece of invented tech. 

The book is a super easy read, nice and relaxed, with moments of comedy, and tragedy. The chapters were quite short which always encourages me to read more and more of the book as I always wanted to know what happened next. I wasn't too impressed with the ending of the book, as it seemed quite flawed, and wrapped things up a little too neatly. But again I quite like to finish a book thinking, 'but what about them?', or 'did they find what they were looking for?'

This book is probably aimed at a more general audience rather than just the science fiction audience.

Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/andy-parry/episodes/SFATW---001---Iceland---LOVESTAR---Andri-Snr-Magnason-e20b9i0

 Italy - Bug - Giacomo Sartori

This has been deliveried, and is top of my to be read pile

 

Finland - The Quantum Theif - Hannu Rajaniemi

Finland - The Quantum Theif - Hannu Rajanniemi

Or you can just listen to the podacast:

England - Speaking of Dinosaurs - Philip E. High

This book was part of a stash of 12 random books in the venture series I found in a charity shop. This had the most exciting sounding title, and had dinosaurs on in the title, so it got bumped up the to be read pile.

It doesn't really fit into my books from around the world project, but I'm blogging all the sci fi I'm reading on here too. So it gets added to the England list, maybe one day i'll try and read a book written by an author from every county in the UK, oh God! of course i'm going to do that. I've really enjoyed discovering new books and searching for book from around the world so now. i'm pretty sure i'm going to go back over my read pile and see which counties the authors were born in!

Anyway the book was really good, way better than I was expecting, I was thinking it would be pretty pulpy and trashy, but the ideas where really cool. I'm no expert on writing style or anything like that, but it was easy reading, with only a couple of plot holes and 'why would you do that!!?!?!?!?' moments but I would recommend this and may even read more of Philip E. High's work.

England - Step Forward Harry Salt - Ross Lowe

This book is set in my home county of Derbyshire in England, and published by a small independent company that set up shop in my home town (https://www.beardedbadgerpublishing.com/). Anyway enough trying to promote a mates publishing company, on with the book.

I wanted to love this book, and I had high hopes for it too, and the first few chapters were nicely odd, weird and engaging. As the book continued I got pretty hooked and was invested in Harry Salt's life and new adventure. The book took a nice twist about two thirds into the book, and settled nicely into the sci-fi genre. Weirdly as it started into sci-fi I found the book took on a very different feel, and just went a little childish and slightly slapstick. Look, I loved the book, the ideas, and the style of writing, and the connections to Derbyshire, i was just a little disappointed with the last third of the book.

England - Imagination Chamber - Philip Pulman

England - Imagination Chamber - Philip Pulman

x

Russia - We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

Russia wasn't a hard country to find sci fi authors. And 'We' soon became a clear choice. I love brave new world and 1984, and this book is cited as being inspiration to both those books. Early into the book it became clear why. A classic dystopian future, of a working drone like population, lacking in empathy, morals and emotion. A bleak view of the future indeed.

The book it's self wasn't quite to my taste I'm not a fan of diary style books when the author talks directly to the reader. I find it breaks a little of facade and reminds you this is a work of fiction time and time again, and does encourage me to commit to the book and the story.

The ideas and the struggles in the book are really good though, and well thought out. But I just found this book dry and long winded, I just did care about the people, or their fate. Nice concept, thought provoking, but simply didn't engage with me.