Mandy Wight

L’Art de Perdre-The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter translated by Frank Wyne. This multi-generational family novel tells the story of a family’s transition from Algeria to France in 1962 when Algeria gained independence from France. The novel spans the period from the early …

I can't remember what put me onto this novel but having read it I'm a dedicated Alice Zeniter fan and eagerly waiting for more work of hers to be translated @terribleman.com peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/10/16/l...

Endling by Maria Reva This engaging novel, long listed for the Booker Prize 2025, tells the story of three women working for the Romeo meets Yulia Bridal Agency in Ukraine. They meet just days before the full-scale inva…

'Endling' by Maria Reva is about snails and brides and how to write about war. It's a great and a sobering read :
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To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek. I’m not a great reader of historical fiction, though I hugely enjoyed Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll,  and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Those novels were set in the Thirty Years’ War of the 1600…

The world of 1348 is not as far away as you might think: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/t...

The Life, Old Age and Death of a Working-Class Woman by Didier Eribon, translated by Michael Lucey. Didier Eribon is probably best known to Anglophone readers for his memoir Return to Reims. There, he writes about his re-engagement with his family after decades of estrangement, in which he moved …

I've just read this moving account of Didier Eribon's mother in old age-her time in a nursing home, their relationship, his appreciation of what she did for him: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/05/t...

I’ve read that- loved it! Any other recommendations?

Me too! What do you recommend next?

The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg translated by Dick Davis-Women in Translation Month 2025. I have to say that when I started reading this novel for Women in Translation Month, I did think the unthinkable: can one have a little too much of Natalia Ginzburg? It’s been, after all, barely tw…

Sorry-just one day late for August's #Womenintranslation25 month- Natalia Ginzburg's last novel: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/t...

Feet in Chains by Kate Roberts, translated by Katie Gramich, read for Women in Translation Month 2025. The Welsh writer Kate Roberts was born in Caernarfonshire in 1891 and brought up in the slate-quarrying area of North-West Wales. She knew well, therefore, the landscape and the world of the quarry…

I enjoyed this translation from Welsh of Kate Roberts’ Feet in Chains read for #WITMonth2025
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Currently - Germany: United and Divided - BBC Sounds Historian Katja Hoyer investigates East German disillusion 35 years after reunification.

Katja Hoyer visits Guben in East Germany to see if differences still persist between East and West
http//:www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002hkw3?partner=uk.co.bbc

The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor. I chose this novel for WITMonth because I loved Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore. The Heart touched me even more and in a more profound place. It’s not a romance, as yo…

I've just read this moving novel for #WITMonth in stunning translation by Sam Taylor: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/t...

I visited Hay last week and just had to stock up on Welsh writing.

Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg translated by D. M. Low It’s been such a joy to read Natalia Ginzburg again for Women in Translation Month—though odd to call it a joy really when, as in so many of her books, her characters’ desire for love and connectio…

Still loving Natalia Ginzburg, read for #Womenintranslation Month2025 peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/v...

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar translated by Ruth Martin. In February 2024 I attended a book launch at London’s Goethe Institut where Shida Bazyar and her translator, Ruth Martin, presented her debut novel Sisters in Arms. I really enjoyed this book and w…

This was my first book read for #WomeninTranslation month 2025-an excellent, moving, family novel set in Iran and Germany, told in different voices: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/t...

So great to hear @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social on @bbcradio4.bsky.social talk about Norman Lewis’ book Naples 44 as the book he would gift. Such a powerful shattering book about that great city at the end of the war.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden The Safekeep, which has just won the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, draws you in from the very beginning. Isabel finds a broken piece of ceramic under the roots of a dead gourd amongst the vegetab…

Before I start on my #WomeninTranslation month books I had to read this- it’s a worthy winner of the #2025 Women’s Prize peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/01/t...

Great to hear you’re revisiting your school exchange city Ruth. We’ve currently got an exhibition in Sheffield Central Library about the long-standing twinning between Sheffield and Bochum.

So this is my reading pile for #WomeninTranslation month 2025. Aiming high.

Das Vorkommnis- The Event by Julia Schoch This short, concise novel begins with the eponymous event. The first person narrator, a writer, has just finished a reading of her new novel in the arts centre of a North German town. She’s sitting…

This account of meeting an unknown sister got right under my skin:
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Count me in. Just lining up the books.

Beyond the Wall, East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer In this fascinating history of the 40 year life of the German Democratic Republic, Katja Hoyer aims to set the record straight. In the preface she says that reunification of East and West Germany i…

Katja Hoyer's engaging history of East Germany filled in many gaps for me and has a place on the shelf of every historian, Germanist, or indeed general reader: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/b...

UK’s aid cuts ‘will hit children’s education and raise risk of death’ Cutting aid budget to 0.3% of national income will hurt many African countries, says FCDO impact assessment

“We are modernising our approach to international development” claims Govt. No, you’re eviscerating it, with your own impact assessment showing most vulnerable communities hit hardest, increasing suffering & driving global insecurity. Ministers should hang their heads in shame @oxfamgb.bsky.social

Excellent to hear BBC Radio 4'sToday programme focusing on the difficulties faced by care leavers and others in providing landlords with a guarantor. Thanks to Leeds MP Alex Sobel and the charity Become @becomecharity.org.uk‬ @katharinesj.bsky.social for highlighting this issue.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention calls on world leaders to step in immediately with measures that ensure food and water gets into Gaza right now.

No more discussions, meetings, reports, sessions, summits.

“GET FOOD AND WATER INTO GAZA NOW.

IF YOU HAVE THE POWER, YOU MUST USE IT.”

Sans intervention immédiate, les derniers reporters de Gaza vont mourir 21 juillet 2025 L'AFP travaille avec une pigiste texte, trois photographes et six pigistes vidéo dans la Bande de Gaza depuis le départ de ses journalistes staff courant 2024. Avec quelques autres, ils sont aujourd'hui les seuls à rapporter ce qu'il se passe dans la Bande de Gaza. La presse internationale est interdite d'entrer dans ce territoire depuis près de deux ans. Nous refusons de les voir mourir. L'un deux, Bashar, collabore pour l'AFP depuis 2010, d'abord comme fixeur, ensuite comme photographe pigiste, et depuis 2024 comme principal photographe. Samedi 19 juillet, il est parvenu à poster un message sur Facebook: « Je n'ai plus la force de travailler pour les médias. Mon corps est maigre et je ne peux plus travailler ». Bashar, 30 ans, travaille et vit dans des conditions égales à celles de tous les Gazaouis, allant d'un camp de réfugiés à un autre camp au gré des bombardements israéliens. Depuis plus d'un an il vit dans le dénuement le plus total et travaille en prenant d'énormes risques pour sa vie. L'hygiène est pour lui un problème majeur, avec des périodes de maladies intestinales sévères. Bashar vit depuis février dans les ruines de sa maison de Gaza City avec sa mère, ses quatre frères et sœurs et la famille d'un de ses frères. Leur maison est vide de tout aménagement et confort, à part quelques coussins. Dimanche matin, il a rapporté que son frère aîné était « tombé, à cause de la faim ». Même si ces journalistes reçoivent un salaire mensuel de l'AFP, il n'y a rien à acheter ou alors à des prix totalement exorbitants. Le système bancaire a disparu, et ceux qui pratiquent le change entre les comptes bancaires en ligne et l'argent liquide prennent une commission de près de 40%. L'AFP n'a plus la possibilité d'avoir un véhicule et encore moins de l'essence pour permettre à ses journalistes de se déplacer pour leurs reportages. Circuler en voiture équivaut de toutes les façons à pre…

🚨BREAKING: The last journalists working for AFP in Gaza have said they can no longer work for the news agency.

They are out of energy and they are starving to death.

I have never seen a statement from a news organisation like it.

🧵

Museum der Einsamkeit, The Museum of Loneliness by Ralf Rothmann I’m a fan of German writer Ralf Rothmann. I’ve enjoyed his writing set in the post-war Ruhrgebiet, like Junges Licht, as well as his wartime novels like Im Frühling Sterben,To Die in Spring, transl…

I've just read Ralf Rothmann's latest short story collection- there's a range of voices here, from ageing labourers to six year old children. He's a master of characterisation and of the form:
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Siblings by Brigitte Reimann translated by Lucy Jones This deceptively slim novel is set over one Easter weekend around 1960 in a provincial town in the former East Germany. It’s a very personal and intense account of a sister’s feelings when she lear…

I'm really enjoying Katja Hoyer's Beyond the Wall, a compelling history of East Germany, and a sort of underlay for Brigitte Reiman's novel Siblings @lucy-jones-books.bsky.social which keeps coming to mind as I'm reading.
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In October 45 African nations met in Manchester, for the Fifth Pan- African Congress. Their hopes, ambitions and rivalries are explored with wit, feeling and panache in the fabulous new play Liberation by Ntombizodwa Nyoni at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre @rxtheatre.bsky.social. Do see it!

Looking at Women Looking at War- A War and Justice Diary by Victoria Amelina Victoria Amelina was a well-known Ukrainian writer. She wrote novels for children and adults, essays and poetry, in Ukrainian and English, and was published in The Irish Times, The Dublin Review of…

I'm thrilled that Victoria Amelina's book Looking at Women Looking at War has won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, such a powerful account of women's courageous acts in the face of war:
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So good to know. That it's your favourite, not about the pain! I was looking at this only yesterday in @hatchards.bsky.social St Pancras.

38 Londres Street- On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia by Philippe Sands. The title of Philippe Sands’ most recent book felt serendipitous when I read the reviews this spring: I’d visited Santiago de Chile in January, and knew that 38 Londres Street, right in the centre …

This is an indispensable book for those interested in history, politics and international law, many thanks @philippesands.bsky.social peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/3...