33/196. Some highlights.

In seeking some commonality in the novels I read I realised that they question our humanity, our relationships to family, friends and the way that we behave as humans. This is inescapable, we have to live with being people and fiction reflects the broad experience of being a person. Sometimes the work of novelists is bleak. Argentinia's Agustina Bazterrica's vision of an edible human underclass certainly falls into that category and the Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's The Discomfort of Evening, in which the protagonist experiences a dehumanisation, or perhaps an ultra humanisation that is skin-crawling, are examples of the bleakest international 21st century literature. On the flip side I have read less horrifying work that reflects the unsettling experience of interacting with European politics in the form of Blind Man by Mitja Cander. Reflecting on trends that are all too real in government's across the world right now, it is a satire that hits the nail on the head.

Blind Man is a book about work and I have read a number of those, Japanese author Kikuko Tsumura's There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job takes the reader through a series of quirky temp jobs that made me reflect on my own history of work, Danish Science-Fiction author Olga Ravn envisages a future workplace in The Employees .

Books about family life, the complications and aspirations, the way that families belong to geography have featured in fiction from Oman, Poland, North Korea and Kazakhstan. While the set up and location of those families might feel specific to foreign countries the relationships reflect universal experiences that cross borders. The commonalities of relationships, breaking down, building up and the emotions felt by people are as striking as the differences in these books. The capacity to write bleak fiction, satirical novels, books about everyday life is a bridge between cultures.

One of the earliest, shortest novels I've read is Trifonia Melibea Obono's La Bastarda, an LGBT work from Equitorial Guinea and it continues to be a book that is absolutely distinct from my life in the UK. If you want to read something from somewhere else that reflects a completely different experience I recommend this, not as a book but as an experience of another kind of life. It speaks to family and romantic relationships from a perspective that is unlike many of the books I've read since.