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I’m reading two short novels in beautifully compact hardcover editions. This is the best size for a book: just a little bigger than your hand, so you can easily hold it open at face level. Course if you’re Shaq an atlas is portable.

Ransom is the Australian novelist David Malouf’s powerful rendering of an episode from the Iliad: King Priam’s attempt to recover the mangled body of his son Hector, viciously murdered by Achilles.

My reading buddy and I have agreed that after The Brothers Karamazov next week, we will take a short break from old man Dostoevsky to read the Greek tragedies. We are now haggling over whose translations to use. Also, our reading program has been expanded to include authors no one seems to read anymore (Roger Martin du Gard), authors required in lit courses, new translations of important works, and obscure texts. Yes, since Demons was a hard slog, we are ratcheting up the degree of difficulty. So far I’ve managed to keep George Eliot out of the list, but I had to agree to Fernand Braudel’s three-volume The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, in which he discusses in eye-crossing detail bills of lading from ships of the period. The Russians are still the main course.

I first heard of the Hungarian author Sandor Marai a few years ago from Jose at Instituto Cervantes, who called it an absolute must read. Marai was a leading novelist in the 1930s, an anti-fascist who survived WWII but had to flee his country because he was hounded by the communists. He moved to Italy then to the US, where he killed himself in 1989. His books are now being translated into English; Embers was done by Carol Brown Janeway.

Both books are available at National Bookstore, Ransom on the shelves for P1005, Embers in the bargain bin, P99.

On Monday, Karamazov.