Book Haul – January 2018

I decided to celebrate the arrival of 2018 by buying more books! And, more importantly, I badly needed three of them for my ‘EU still 28’ reading project. Two of the four books I recently acquired were written by authors I haven’t read before, while the other two are by an author whose work I’m already familiar with and that I tend to really enjoy.

The four newest additions to my shelves are:

 

The Life of Hunger by Amélie Nothomb

The Life of Hunger is the book I chose to read by a Belgian writer for the ‘EU still 28’ project. It’s a fictional memoir about the formative journeys of Nothomb’s youth, during which she suffered from acute anorexia.

 

The New Sorrows of Young W. by Ulrich Plenzdorf

The New Sorrows of Young W. focuses on another life story, this time of Edgar W., who rebels against the rules of communist East Germany. It’s described as “absurd, funny and touching”, and as a “cult German bestseller”. I’m really curious to know if I will appreciate the satire supposedly present throughout this short novel.

 

O Homem Duplicado (The Double) by José Saramago

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, the main character of this novel, is a History teacher who is tired of his customary life. One day, while watching a rented video, he discovers that one of the actors is physically identical to him. So, he decides to go on a quest to find his double. He apparently loses control of what happens afterwards, and I cannot wait to discover what that is.

 

História do Cerco de Lisboa (The History of the Siege of Lisbon) by José Saramago

I bought both The Double and The History of the Siege of Lisbon while visiting the José Saramago Foundation last month, in order to take advantage of the discount of the same value as the entrance fee at the bookshop. I plan to read the first one this year, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to The History of the Siege of Lisbon. It features a story within a story, and mixes history with fiction. Raimundo Silva recalls the conquest of Lisbon to the Moors by the Crusaders in the 12th century.

Have you read or want to read any of these books? Tell me in the comments!