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Continue reading →: The Wax Child by Olga Ravn
translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken and published in August 2025 Though novels about witch trials are nothing new, this wonderful new novella from Olga Ravn stubbornly refuses to go the way any of them has gone before. What it is, is an experimental novella set in the 1600s,…
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Continue reading →: Saksun on the island of StreymoyThree days of eighty mile per hour winds and torrential, almost sideways, rain here. That mustn’t be interpreted as a moan in anyway, as it’s nothing out of the ordinary at this time of year. There are very few visitors currently for a reason. Though it has been testing at…
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Continue reading →: All That Dies In April by Mariana Travacio
translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Will Morningstar Published September 2025 Lina Ramos and her husband, Relicario, live in the high, arid lands above the pampas in Argentina. The exact location isn’t revealed, but from my own travels (and imagination) I picture somewhere above Salta. Life is a struggle, particularly…
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Continue reading →: The Tower At The Edge Of The World by William Heinesen
translated from the Danish (Faroe Islands) by Glyn Jones – Published 1976 This is ideal reading for anyone contemplating a trip to the Faroe Islands in that it is particularly strong on local culture and the characters that inhabit the small wind and rainswept communities. I’ve seen its described as…
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Continue reading →: Lone Wolf: Walking the fault lines of Europe by Adam Weymouth
Non-fiction – Conservation – Published May 2025 Recently short-listed for the Baillie Gifford prize, this is the sort of conservation writing that I really enjoy reading, in that it considers both sides of the argument, those for and against the repopulation of the wolf. In 2012, a young wolf who…
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Continue reading →: Into the mountains on BorðoyI had a really good day in the mountains on Thursday, but since then there have been two days of wind and rain, so it’s been a case of battening down the hatches, and only getting out for a short time in the morning and early evening. I’m still between…
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Continue reading →: On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia
translated from the Portuguese by Parma Viswanathan Charco Press – Published August 2025 This is another tremendous achievement by the Brazilian writer, following Of Cattle and Men, though it serves as a prequel to that as is revealed in the last pages. In an unnamed country where enslaved people were…
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Continue reading →: The Islands of Borðoy and ViðoyIn 2004 after almost eight months living in Queenstown, New Zealand working as a cricket coach, I returned to the UK via the United States of America. I took the Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles and then made my way across the States by Greyhound Bus, stopping to…
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Continue reading →: Into The Sun by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
translated (in 2025) from the French (Switzerland) by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan Originally published in 1922 – Science Fiction It seems these days, that few books live up to their exciting premise, but this, though I hurriedly add was first published in 1922, certainly does. One day the news…
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Continue reading →: The Predicament by William Boyd
British Spy Literature published August 2025 I’ll begin by saying I’m a huge Boyd fan. I’ve read and enjoyed everything he has written. I’m not sure though, there’s quite enough in the character of Gabriel Dax to sustain a trilogy, but this is entertaining enough. In the second of the…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 