PositiveThe Spectator (UK)Damian Catani’s biography of Céline is also an extensive commentary on the work ... Very much a fan, he makes some effort to lighten the charges against him. I’m not convinced it’s worth the bother; you can either digest the sins or not ... comprehensive and lucid—though Catani has been very unlucky in that a huge trove of Céline manuscripts has resurfaced just in the past month. Increasingly, I find myself losing interest in learning about a writer’s maternal grand-father, but Céline is laid bare here for the curious reader or student. The book is particularly good on the scandal of Céline being republished (it is amusing to see the convicted former French president Nicolas Sarkozy coming out to bat for him).
Jaroslav Kalfar
RaveThe GuardianNo one can accuse Kalfar of showing a lack of ambition. His first novel is bursting at the seams: as well as being about interplanetary shenanigans, it is also a history of the Czech lands from the middle ages to the present and, in the second half of the book, a thriller ... It’s as if an episode of Star Trek has crashed into Milan Kundera’s The Joke ... Spaceman of Bohemia should win many fans. It’s Solaris with laughs, history lessons and a pig killing. I will be interested to see what Kalfar has to say about the US in the future.
