Japandi style is the mix of Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics, which often means pared down looks, effortless simplicity and natural materials like wood and stone. Since I’m currently reading the Japanese novel Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, which is about many things, but mostly about young girls longing for a home, I craved some inspirational homes (very, very far removed from anything the people in the novel might actually live in).
I was only able to attend the Leipzig Book Fair on one day, Sunday, the last day of the fair. But I was wowed by the scale and comfort of it, after the drudgery that is the London Book Fair. But of course the Leipzig Book Fair is designed for readers, while the London one is for trade. I haven’t been to Frankfurt yet, but I assume that one is more like London, while the Geneva Book Fair was more like Leipzig, but much smaller. Leipzig is a town that has specialised in trade fairs for a few centuries, and built an entirely new vast infrastructure for it to the north of town, which is served by train, tram and shuttle bus (and if you have a ticket for the fair, you can travel for free on public transport to get to and from it).
I was in the UK for London Book Fair last week and also spent two days in Cambridge with my older son. It was cold but sunny, and I’ve always felt that Cambridge is at its best in spring, when everything starts blooming riotously.
Of course we had a little saunter through the grounds of some of the colleges, including my son’s favourite in terms of architecture and gardens (aside from the one he is at): St John’s.
However, one of my favourite places in Cambridge is Kettle’s Yard – a dream home for an art collector couple called Jim and Helen Ede. Simple, but cosy, personal, beautiful.
The reason why I’m quite a bit behind with my reading for the International Booker longlist is because I rather foolishly embarked upon the two longest volumes at once.
Daniel Kehlmann: The Director, transl. Ross Benjamin, Riverrun, 2025
I actually read this one in the original German, because I found it in the library, so cannot pronounce myself about the translation (although my peer mentor and I are planning to work through some passages together over Zoom in the near future). However, it’s interesting that the hefty 464 pages of the original have been reduced to a more manageable 352 pages in English. That’s quite a gap, even though I fully accept that English is a more economical language than German, so I suspect that some passages (I believe the PG Wodehouse ones for example) may have been substantially reduced. Sadly, the original title ‘Lichtspiel’ was a lot more evocative and playful, it’s an older word often used in connection with early movies and could be translated as ‘play of light’ or ‘shadow play’ or ‘fluttering light’ or ‘photoplay’. That would give us more of a feel of the ambiguity of Austrian film director GW Pabst and his decision to return to Nazi Germany and continue making films there. ‘The Director’ is a far too literal and bland title.
And, sadly, that’s how I felt about the novel too. It has a series of entertaining vignettes – I particularly relished the opening scene with the former assistant (now suffering from dementia) being interviewed on TV and the meeting between Pabst and Goebbels – but overall it felt rather flat (some jokes and threats got repeated way too often, and no one has ever claimed that Kehlmann is a great prose stylist). Nor did I get that much of an insight of the psychological torture Pabst might have felt at the outset, as he compromises more and more, while at the end he seems to be nothing more than a shell of a man. Several of the other characters feel rather cliché when they make an appearance (Greta Garbo, Louise Brooks, the Hollywood producers, most of the Nazis). Perhaps I was too busy comparing it unfavourably to Julian Barnes’ fictionalised book on Shostakovich, which I thought did a much better job of describing the real dilemma of the artist trying to create art under dictatorial regimes.
Nevertheless, it was entertaining enough and I read it quite quickly, unlike the next one, which took me nearly two weeks to finish. Yet the second one was a decidedly better book both in terms of psychology and artistry. I believe The Director was published more than a year ago in the US but such is the strange nature of the International Booker eligibility that it is eligible this year as well, when it’s being published in the UK. Incidentally, while the American cover is a generic picture of a 1930s couple in front of a landscape, whatever happened to the UK cover? It’s absolutely dire.
Anjet Daanje: The Remembered Soldier, transl. David McKay, Scribe UK, 2025
Another book that has already been published in the US, and again with a much better cover, although this time it’s the UK cover that is terribly generic. In fact, it has already won the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2025 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award in the US in 2025, so it does feel like the International Booker have come late to it or have not made much of an effort to discover something fresh or different. (Then again, last year I was complaining that they didn’t include obvious big hitters such as Olga Tokarczuk or Han Kang).
This one took me over two weeks to read, although it was far more poignant and beautifully written. One thing that did drive me bonkers was the endless repetition of ‘And…’ at the start of nearly every sentence and every paragraph. It’s supposed to create a sense of flow, I get it, but it felt like a stylistic flourish that merely exasperated me and took me out of the book. Also, all of the dialogue is rendered indirectly, another needlessly gimmicky device.
However, having got the grumbles out of the way, I have to admit I found the story deeply affecting. Four years after the First World War ended, former soldier Noon Merckem (thus-named because he was found at noon in the town of Merckem) is living in an asylum, because he has lost his memory. Countless women come to see him in the hope that he might turn out to be their long-missing husband, but they usually end up disappointed. Until one day Julienne appears and claims he is her photographer husband Amand. Almost against the advice of the doctors, they go home together and try to rebuild a life that remains alive only in one person’s remembrance. The ways in which they gradually learn to help and love each other, also occasionally distrust and hate each other, are described in subtle and very gradual, natural detail. Along the way, it’s not just Amand that starts having doubts whether his past life and marriage were really as idyllic as Julienne portrays them. The author doesn’t shy away from describing the horrors of war which return in the nightmares plaguing Noon/Amand, but there are also moments of happiness, lyrical, sun-filled descriptions of sitting by the river or riding a bicycle together. Daanje is excellent on close observation of a couple.
The book reminded me quite a bit of the film Phoenix by Christian Petzold (which was adapted from a French novel), although in that case it’s a missing wife who returns after the Second World War and she is not recognised by her husband. But it has the same mysterious and sad atmosphere, the same ambiguous resolution and memorable scenes.
And for days they circle each other like this, not that she avoids him, they are often together, he sits with her in the kitchen when she cooks, the two of them work in the studio together… and they try to find intimacy again, they talk, exchange glances, smile at each other, she rests her hand on his shoulder, he his hand on her back but every attempt runs aground on a poisonous mixture of inflated intentions, overwrought expectations, and doubts, and after a while, fresh disappointment and shame. How could it be that before the war they lived a life together effortlessly, and now, after eight years of waiting, it’s there for the taking yet it still eludes their grasp, it must be his fault, maybe a person needs a past to be happy, and there are also times he thinks it must be her, there’s something about her, something unnameable.
The saddest part of the book for me was when Amand feels that he might be losing his memory forever, and not even remember Julienne and their children, so they rehearse the story she is going to tell him about their life together, to try and remind him. This part is all about the power of storytelling and I’ve seen it recently in action with people suffering from dementia ‘as if they can use their carefully compiled past to outsmart life itself, and whatever happens, nothing can touch them as long as she memorizes the right words’.
I think The Remembered Soldier will almost certainly be shortlisted and indeed has a good chance of winning the International Booker. Not that sure about The Director.
I’m pretty sure I’ve handled this topic before, because at some point I was contemplating doing a loft conversion in my house in Maidenhead – I wanted to have my office and library up there. I’m glad I didn’t do it in the end, because it would have been very expensive and unlikely to be appreciated by most potential buyers. (Of course, for us book nerds, it would have been the clincher!). In a family of tall people, I’m not sure that low ceilings are terribly practical, but I stayed at a friend’s house in London in August and her guest room in the loft conversion was perfect for my size. So it can be done!
You knew this was coming, didn’t you? I’ve always been fascinated by writers’ homes and back when I lived in France/Switzerland, I visited a fair few in person. Here are some German writers’ homes which I have not visited yet but fully intend to.
I think my blog is being attacked by bots, because there is no way the traffic has ramped up so dramatically following a couple of book reviews and escapist pictures. But I will ignore all of that and keep going, as long as they don’t try to infect me or you readers with some kind of virus. For today, I was dreaming of escaping to places with better weather, or at least to places where there might be summer at present, with some beautiful buildings that have actually been properly designed by architects rather than cookie-cutter building.
It has been quite a harsh winter in Bucharest too: snow, ice, freezing cold, low clouds and fog. I had one sunny day while I was there last week and I made the most of it.
My shelves may be delivered and built by the time this post comes out – here’s to hoping anyway. So my current obsession with home libraries may be coming to an end, but not before we admire these images below.
I think my shelves are going to be delivered soon(ish), and I might even be able to find someone to put them together for me, the clumsiest craftsman ever. So in celebration of that, I’ll start the New Year with more lovely pictures of home libraries.
findingtimetowrite 