Mandy Wight
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mandywight.bsky.social
Mandy Wight
@mandywight.bsky.social
87 followers 120 following 62 posts
Book blogger, reader, German to English translator, languages teacher. Joys in life include hill and city walking, yoga, tango, travelling, theatre and cinema, speaking languages I know, and having a go at learning new ones.
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I learned so much about Donbas and Ukraine’s eastern regions from
this wonderful book, thank you @victoriadonovan.bsky.social peakreads.wordpress.com/2026/01/09/l...
Life in Spite of Everything-Tales from the Ukrainian East by Victoria Donovan.
Victoria Donovan first visited the Donbas area in Eastern Ukraine in 2019, and found herself going back there time and again. Originally from Cardiff, she felt some affinity to the landscape in the…
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January 10, 2026 at 11:31 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
I am so thrilled to be reading Life in Spite of Everything @victoriadonovan.bsky.social and to be learning again about Mariupol and the Azovstal steelworks, first encountered in the work of Natascha Wodin www.asymptotejournal.com/fiction/the-...
The River and the Sea - Asymptote
I lived for a few years as a child by the small Franconian river called the Regnitz. We were moved there in 1951, from a camp for Displaced Persons to the four new tower blocks by the river. We were f...
www.asymptotejournal.com
January 8, 2026 at 12:34 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
This wonderful memoir is definitely one of my top books of 2025:
peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/12/20/m...
Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s most recent book is a memoir of her mother, Mary Roy, who died in 2022. Mary Roy was a formidable and extraordinary woman, who founded and led a progressive school in Kerala, India,…
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December 20, 2025 at 11:01 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
It's week 4 of #GermanLitMonth2025 peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/g...
German Lit Month 2025 Week 4-Das Liebespaar des Jahrhunderts-The Couple of the Century by Julia Schoch.
This week is supposed to be about writers from the former GDR. I can’t really categorise Julia Schoch as such. She was in her mid-teens at the time of reunification, and so has lived most of her li…
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November 24, 2025 at 6:24 PM
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Week 3 of #GermanLitMonth and I'm reading Volker Weidermann on Thomas Mann: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/m...
German Lit Month 2025-Mann vom Meer-Thomas Mann, Man of the Sea, by Volker Weidermann.
Here I am again, reading around the great Thomas Mann, rather than tackling the work itself. But I couldn’t resist this book, recommended by danares.mag-blog, as I very much enjoyed Volker Weiderma…
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November 20, 2025 at 12:22 PM
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It's Thomas Mann week in #germanlitmonth and I've read Norman Ohler's book on 'The Magic Mountain'

peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/g...
German Lit Month 2025- Week 3- Thomas Mann. Der Zauberberg, die ganze Geschichte by Norman Ohler.
It feels like Thomas Mann has been on my mind this whole past year—not surprisingly, as 2025 is the 150th anniversary since his birth, and readers have been looking again at the man and his work. F…
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November 17, 2025 at 11:31 AM
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I loved this book about gardens and so much more : peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/t...
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.
Contrary to what the title suggests, this is not just a book about gardens or gardening. It is certainly both those things. But it’s also an exploration of cultural, literary and political ideas ar…
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November 10, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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In week 2 of #germanlitmonth it's all about The City. I've read this beautiful novella set in Rome by FCDelius translated by Jamie Bulloch :
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German Lit Month 2025- Week 2- The City-Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by FC Delius, translated by Jamie Bulloch
What better book to suit this week’s German Lit Month theme than this short novella, set in Rome? It takes place over one hour in January 1943 and is an inner monologue told by a young woman walkin…
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November 10, 2025 at 9:43 AM
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My first book for #germanlitmonth. I've not followed the suggested schedule as this was calling me from the bookcase and I'm so pleased to have read it: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/g...
German Literature Month XV- Inheritance ( Erbgut) by Marlen Hobrack
Many of us in mid-life go through the sad business of clearing out a deceased parent’s home. Few will encounter a challenge as overwhelming as that faced by Marlen Hobrack when her mother died: she…
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November 3, 2025 at 6:28 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
I've just read the latest unsettling collection from Samanta Schweblin:
peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/g...
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell.
I’ve admired Samanta Schweblin’s previous writing—the novella Fever Dream, the short story collection A Mouthful of Birds, then the novel Little Eyes and the short stories Seven Empty Houses both r…
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October 20, 2025 at 10:16 AM
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I can't remember what put me onto this novel but having read it I'm a dedicated Alice Zeniter fan and eagerly waiting for more work of hers to be translated @terribleman.com peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/10/16/l...
L’Art de Perdre-The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter translated by Frank Wyne.
This multi-generational family novel tells the story of a family’s transition from Algeria to France in 1962 when Algeria gained independence from France. The novel spans the period from the early …
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October 16, 2025 at 3:18 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
'Endling' by Maria Reva is about snails and brides and how to write about war. It's a great and a sobering read :
peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/28/e...
Endling by Maria Reva
This engaging novel, long listed for the Booker Prize 2025, tells the story of three women working for the Romeo meets Yulia Bridal Agency in Ukraine. They meet just days before the full-scale inva…
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September 28, 2025 at 5:24 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
The world of 1348 is not as far away as you might think: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/t...
To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek.
I’m not a great reader of historical fiction, though I hugely enjoyed Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll,  and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Those novels were set in the Thirty Years’ War of the 1600…
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September 16, 2025 at 8:50 AM
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I've just read this moving account of Didier Eribon's mother in old age-her time in a nursing home, their relationship, his appreciation of what she did for him: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/05/t...
The Life, Old Age and Death of a Working-Class Woman by Didier Eribon, translated by Michael Lucey.
Didier Eribon is probably best known to Anglophone readers for his memoir Return to Reims. There, he writes about his re-engagement with his family after decades of estrangement, in which he moved …
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September 5, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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Sorry-just one day late for August's #Womenintranslation25 month- Natalia Ginzburg's last novel: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/t...
The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg translated by Dick Davis-Women in Translation Month 2025.
I have to say that when I started reading this novel for Women in Translation Month, I did think the unthinkable: can one have a little too much of Natalia Ginzburg? It’s been, after all, barely tw…
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September 1, 2025 at 10:37 AM
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I enjoyed this translation from Welsh of Kate Roberts’ Feet in Chains read for #WITMonth2025
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Feet in Chains by Kate Roberts, translated by Katie Gramich, read for Women in Translation Month 2025.
The Welsh writer Kate Roberts was born in Caernarfonshire in 1891 and brought up in the slate-quarrying area of North-West Wales. She knew well, therefore, the landscape and the world of the quarry…
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August 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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Katja Hoyer visits Guben in East Germany to see if differences still persist between East and West
http//:www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002hkw3?partner=uk.co.bbc
Currently - Germany: United and Divided - BBC Sounds
Historian Katja Hoyer investigates East German disillusion 35 years after reunification.
www.bbc.co.uk
August 27, 2025 at 3:25 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
I've just read this moving novel for #WITMonth in stunning translation by Sam Taylor: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/t...
The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor.
I chose this novel for WITMonth because I loved Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore. The Heart touched me even more and in a more profound place. It’s not a romance, as yo…
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August 24, 2025 at 11:57 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
I visited Hay last week and just had to stock up on Welsh writing.
August 23, 2025 at 6:59 AM
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Still loving Natalia Ginzburg, read for #Womenintranslation Month2025 peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/v...
Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg translated by D. M. Low
It’s been such a joy to read Natalia Ginzburg again for Women in Translation Month—though odd to call it a joy really when, as in so many of her books, her characters’ desire for love and connectio…
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August 13, 2025 at 11:45 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
This was my first book read for #WomeninTranslation month 2025-an excellent, moving, family novel set in Iran and Germany, told in different voices: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/t...
The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar translated by Ruth Martin.
In February 2024 I attended a book launch at London’s Goethe Institut where Shida Bazyar and her translator, Ruth Martin, presented her debut novel Sisters in Arms. I really enjoyed this book and w…
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August 8, 2025 at 6:04 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
So great to hear @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social on @bbcradio4.bsky.social talk about Norman Lewis’ book Naples 44 as the book he would gift. Such a powerful shattering book about that great city at the end of the war.
August 4, 2025 at 7:34 AM
mandywight.bsky.social
Before I start on my #WomeninTranslation month books I had to read this- it’s a worthy winner of the #2025 Women’s Prize peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/01/t...
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
The Safekeep, which has just won the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, draws you in from the very beginning. Isabel finds a broken piece of ceramic under the roots of a dead gourd amongst the vegetab…
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August 1, 2025 at 7:49 PM
mandywight.bsky.social
So this is my reading pile for #WomeninTranslation month 2025. Aiming high.
July 31, 2025 at 3:55 PM
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This account of meeting an unknown sister got right under my skin:
peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/07/29/d...
Das Vorkommnis- The Event by Julia Schoch
This short, concise novel begins with the eponymous event. The first person narrator, a writer, has just finished a reading of her new novel in the arts centre of a North German town. She’s sitting…
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July 29, 2025 at 9:07 AM