Wow, reading this was a pleasure, after having read Jean Rhys. You can see almost a direct line from Kafka to Rhys to Kavan to more contemporary novels like Annihilation. The subject matter is banal; everything relevant in the novel is in the writing style and narrator voice. Hazy, elliptical, jumpy, somewhat surreal, sometimes seemingly non-linear, conventional explanations of plot deliberately left out. As you read you’re just in awe of a writer who can pull something like this off, and it feels so incredibly hermetic and thoughtful, rather than contrived. And the subtext of gendered violence penetrating every paragraph.
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Recent Posts
- Reading Nov-Dec 2025 and Jan 2026
- AI as an existential threat – Kevane preliminary draft
- “What can it do?” A living list of computational problems that deep learning/AI/neural nets can or seems likely to “do” (at varying cost and efficacy)
- Reading August-September 2025
- The typical popular sci-fi version of AI posing an existential risk?
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Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Sumbrungu Community Library nighttime reading
- Résumé du livre Une grande mère criminelle
- Organisation d’une séance de discussion autour d’un livre à la bibliothèque de Dimikuy
- Librarians of Tuy monthly meeting January 2026, Burkina Faso
- Impressions sur la production de livres CMH au Burkina Faso
- Compte rendu de la première rencontre des gérants de la zone du Tuy
- Science fiction books for libraries in Burkina Faso and Ghana
- Animation d’une séance de lecture à la bibliothèque de Dimikuy
- Nyariga Community Library in Ghana, photos January 2026
- Visite à la bibliothèque de Béréba, Burkina Faso