The Song of the Safina #1 : The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (4*)

I seem to be on a good reading run at the moment. This one is the latest. Another first novel and it is a stonker (*) of a book, marvellous world building, up there with the best, layered full of politics, love, linguistic classes, uprising and revolution aboard a generational ship.

Oh the wait for book 2!! I just hope it is already well underway in the publication pipeline.

Mahmud El Sayed is a British Egyptian writer, translator and former journalist. He won the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for his novel at that time being entitles "What the Crew Wants". This is not a Prize I was aware of but found the 2026 shortlist on Substack and if other winners are the calibre of this one they should be worth reading.
A stonker is British slang meaning "something that is very good, impressive, or an extreme and massive example of its kind."

The Employees by Olga Ravn. Translated by Martin Aitken (4*)

This author has been on my to read list now for some time and this is the first of her books I have picked up.

Martin Aitken is well known for his translations of other Scandinavian authors and has twice been listed for his translations of Olga Ravn works.

The story is presented as a series of numbered statement from crew members of a spaceship called the Six Thousand Ship. The Guardian book review states "The Employees is not only a disconcertingly quotidian space opera; it’s also an audacious satire of corporate language and the late-capitalist workplace, and a winningly abstracted investigation into what it means to be human. "

What I will say is that it is impressively novel, impressively short, impressively packed full. The Statements illuminate the workplace, the worker, the social interactions amongst the crew, the corporate / political infrastructure in which they work, their reaction to their departure from Earth, their long sojourn into deep space, their arrival on a world called New Discovery and to the artifacts they find there and bring aboard.

But also this novel is very apt in the time I write this with all its discussion of rogue AI agents escaping sandbox boundaries, hacking other systems, their inability to end a conversation, take no for an answer, and to abide by human conventions , rules of law, rules of morality, understanding of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, to distinguish right from wrong when considering actions to be taken.

Reading this book means letting it flow over you as it slowly and with great craft releases its story to you. A thought provoking read

No wonder it was shortlisted for the International Booker 2021!

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

I rarely give a book 5* - this is one.

This is an exceptional little book. With its mixture of Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes references, its episodic passages from Dad, the Boys and the Crow in turn. Crow is the father's alter ego, a grief counselor, bereavement service arriving on the death of wife/mother. The passages are outpourings, stories real and imagined, dreams, memories lost and found, commentaries on the other's passage. Shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award 2015 it is an astoundingly novel, first novel. Unputdownable, unforgettable. Just read it!