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!

10:04 by Ben Lerner

I've read one book by this author before Leaving Atocha Station and I began my review of it with the words "Probably the most compelling first person narrative I have read. " Here again it is written in 1st person. Its title is from the time on the clock tower in the movie Back to the Future and this book also does somersaults with time. It is about an author who has written a story in the New Yorker on the strength of which he has been given a huge advance to write his first novel. But he has much going on in his life including a potentially fatal health diagnosis, the prospect of becoming a father and in exactly what capacity following his female friend, Alex's request to him to help her conceive a child, another friend exhibits 'totalled art' , the art written off by insurance companies after damage, he has a course on Whitman to prepare for his students, he is on a writing retreat at Marfa in Texas from which he turns out a epic poem, and his thoughts are always being distracted . It is through these aspects that Lerner writes this book which essentially is about how writers write. It meanders, philosophizes, ponders the big and the small. It takes a bit of submersion to feel the book, to tease the different threads that are jumbled together, narrative not as we usually are presented with it. But hidden within are some writing gems - one for me was his story about The Challenger Disaster. If you've read Atocha and enjoyed it, read this one. If you've never read Lerner, read slowly, dont rush it, and immerse yourself in his images, lyrical descriptive analyses based on the fleeting glimpses of this that and the other.

Wandering Souls By Cecile Pin

This is one of the best first novels I have ever read! I wonder why they only longlisted it for the Women's Prize? Basically the story of 3 child refugees, 'Boat People' from Vietnam, an older sister and two brothers as they leave Vietnam and make their way first to Hong Kong and then to UK. There is tragedy and joy, racism and welcomes, innocence and experience, the whole migrant experience told through Anh the older sister but also through other voices. First there is the ghost of Dao, a much younger brother who left Vietnam with other family members, and a third voice the narrator unknown until much further into the book. This voice is researching and their passages are factual and shows the author's done her research ( I do not know whether any of this is biographical of her own family history) - 1979 Koh Kra incident ; Operation Wandering Soul ; and academic reference to Transgenerational trauma ( apologies I forgot to make a note of its details) and Joan Didion's book The White Album. In this way the author constructs her book - it is fascinating, creates layers and totally engages the reader. I read it in one sitting, very unusual for me. Stunning!