These past few lovely summer days, Africa on my mind: first there was Salif Keita's dazzle in a Brooklyn dusk, and last evening, Orchestra Baobab's Senegalese spin on Cuban rumba, by the shores of Hudson River.

And to complement such musical feasting, two writers, previously one known and one not, inflaming an old scabby hunger (grown passive with time etc) for literature: this past week witnessed consumption of two novels from the roof of the world, Halldór Laxness's "The Fish Can Sing" (from Icelandic) and Knut Hamsun's brilliant "Growth of the Soil" (from Norwegian)

In keeping with the change in seasons, a header change: detail from a photograph I took of a sunset over Vernazza, Italy. This is the actual photograph; makes a pretty screensaver, if I may say so myself.

Dante, Kafka, Hesse and he Will wander about in the lands Of Visigoths and Romans* for The next three weeks, in which There will be much drinking, much eating, and perhaps more reading

• some documentary evidence Of which may surface here.

• in Asterix's formulation