Der Jazz des Linguas

• BuyNew Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, translated by Judith Landry
  Dedalus, 187 pp, £9.99, May 2011, ISBN 978 1 903517 94 9
• BuyThe Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani, translated by Judith Landry
  Dedalus, 166 pp, £9.99, May 2012, ISBN 978 1 907650 56 7
• BuyLas Adventures des Inspector Cabillot by Diego Marani
  Dedalus, 138 pp, £6.99, July 2012, ISBN 978 1 907650 59 8

Diego Marani works in the Directorate-General for Interpretation at the European Commission, and he writes fiction full of ideas prompted by his day job. New Finnish Grammar, translated last year, is heavy with fear at what it might be like to lose language altogether. The hero is discovered in Trieste in 1943, with no words, memory or identity. He is thought (mistakenly) to be a Finn called Sampo Karjalainen, and is sent to Finland to try to recover his former self. The weather is freezing and the grammar confounding. The novel is an amalgam of conversations half understood, relationships thwarted and lonely bus journeys.