Interestingly, with the exception of Alasdair Gray, I'd never heard of those writing in English, whereas I'd heard of seven of the translated writers.
I wondered, initially, about the inclusion of Ornela Vorpsi, since she writes in Italian, but since the best known Albanian (
Ismail Kadare, of course) writer comes to English via French, I daresay it's no big complaint. In her personal statement, at the back of the book, she does say:
...even though I write in an adopted language - writing meant having to abandon my mother tongue - I am entirely an Albanian writer.
I've tried Jean-Philippe Toussaint, having read
Monsieur twice and come away with absolutely no opinion either way. The first time I read it I wondered if I missed something, so went back and read it again. Nope. But then, my indifference echoes the eponymous Monsieur, and I wonder if
that was the point. Oh, I don't know.
I've had
Julián Ríos's
Larva for a while, inspired by, as Mirabell says, fausto's recommendation, but getting me to read a thick book is a hard sell. And, as for Stamm, I remember his name from
a review I read near the start of the year.
I've got a couple of Alasdair Gray titles, and went to
his book launch around this time last year, but I've not been inspired to pick one yet for, you know, actually reading.