Book Review Podcast

This week: Frank Rich, Nicole Kidman and best sellers.
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Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel review

The writer-director of I've Loved You So Long brings his oblique touch to a delicate study of friendship between two old men This novella, by an award-winning French writer (the author of Brodeck's Report , winner of last year's Independent foreign fiction prize) who is also the writer-director of the Baftawinning film I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime), would be extremely difficult tomake into a film not only because itfeaturesa narrative "trick" that would translate awkwardly to the screen, but also because the author takes pains to avoid pinning down the story to one particular decade or location. The side-effect of this deliberately nonspecific narration is to give the story a hazy, romantic quality, like Vaseline on a camera lens or the sepia tint of an oldphoto. Lack of specificity can read, in other words, as sentimentality: sentimentality about Indochina, and about war, from which the protagonist, an old man named Monsieur L...
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A French blog for Trois autres Malaisie and a new translation for The World of Suzie Wong!

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A French blog for my upcoming collection of short stories Trois autres Malaisie has already been set up by my publisher Editions GOPE for some advance publicity. Soon the translation of Transactions in Thai from Lovers and Strangers Revisited will be available free from the blog. Also Editions GOPE is giving new life to Richard Masons The World of Suzie Wong by launching a new revised, unabridged French translation. Chapter two, you may remember, takes place in Malaysia , in a rubber plantation. French translations of The World of Suzie Wong and Lovers and Strangers Revisited ( Trois autres Malaisie) will soon be side by side. I like that. The World of Suzie Wong was not only an international best seller, it ran for many years as a play on Broadway and in London, and the movie version won Nancy Kwan a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in the role of Suzie. Is there a film version for one of my short stories in the making? Or maybe my Penang-set novel The Expatriates Choice,...
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Orientis partibus

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Giles C. Watson has added a photo to the pool: Orientis partibus From eastern lands came an ass Asinine and bold as brass, Strong as any handsome ox Bearing burdens, hauling rocks. Hup! Hup! Giddyup, Sir Ass! High up the hills of Sychen Donkey-sired under Reuben, He sloshed across the Jordan A-braying like an organ. Hup! Hup! Giddyup, Sir Ass! In mules, roebucks, put no trust Theyll not see Sir Ass for dust. Madianite, swift and hairy, Faster than a dromedary! Hup! Hup! Giddyup, Sir Ass! Pierre de Corbeil: Conduit Manuscrit de Sens , paraphrased from the Latin by Giles Watson. This lyric opens the reconstructed text of the thirteenth century Feast of Fools, as performed by Obsidienne on their album La Fte des Fous, (Calliope, 2005). Pierre de Sens was a scholastic philosopher, and was Bishop of Sens until his death in 1222. The song was most likely sung as a part of the Donkeys Festival at the Feast of the Circumcision on January 1, and in the course of the mass, a donkey was ridden ...
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