Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann

A remarkable achievement… In Mr. Woods's sparkling new translation, the reader now encounters a work that is closer in style, vocabulary, idiom and tone to the original. (The New York Times Book Review)

My thoughts (hastily scribbled on a postcard):

A youthful masterpiece. Definitely a masterpiece; but I feel it has a youthful, undeveloped feel, too. Sesame, for instance, who only ever says, ‘You good child’ - leitmotif or 2D? But the fact that there is no single, monumental event that contributes to the decline of the family, but rather a myriad of failures, individualities and self-perceptions, all of which contribute to the somehow inevitable decline of the family, makes the story and its family engagingly 3D.

The History of Danish Dreams, by Peter Høeg

This witty family saga replete with love and folly is proof enough that this young Dane belongs to a great family of Scandinavian narrators. In exploring the past of a country whose ideas have sometimes veered towards the nightmarish, he reminds us that dreams my also stir the conscience. (Télérama)

My thoughts (hastily scribbled on a postcard):

Beautiful, elegant, thoughtful - even if there is a loss of momentum in the last pages. A fine example of attempting to understand history and oneself by writing (examining) it, no matter - in a sense - what you write.