Happy Wednesday, everyone! Wednesdays also mean WWW Wednesday updates. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. 

The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple: you just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

It’s already the middle of the week—technically, it’s Thursday. Anyway, how has your week been so far? I hope it’s going well and moving in the direction you hoped for. The weekend is just over the horizon, and I hope you make it through another tough week. How time flies! We’re already in the eighth month of the year. As time takes its natural course, I hope everything is going well for everyone. August, after all, is the so-called “Ghost Month”—often seen as ominous. Nevertheless, I hope you’re being showered with blessings and good news. May the rest of the year be fruitful—not only materially but, more importantly, in terms of good physical and mental health. I hope everyone is making steady progress on their goals. But if the year hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped, I wish for the remaining months to be kinder and gentler to you. Reading-wise, I’ve been lagging behind on my reading challenges. To catch up, I shifted my focus to my reading lists, immersing myself in the works of European literature—many of the books on my challenges are written by European authors.

Among the books in these reading challenges is Guido Morselli’s The Communist, which I included in my 2025 Beat the Backlist Challenge. I got a copy back in 2019, despite having no idea what it was about at the time. Unfortunately, it was left to gather dust on my shelf, hence its inclusion in the Backlist Challenge. Originally published in 1976 as Il comunista, the titular Communist is Walter Ferranini, a man seemingly born and bred for the political left. He grew up in poverty and was orphaned at 12. He has a compelling history of fighting fascism: in the 1930s, he left Mussolini’s Italy to fight Franco in Spain before going into exile in the United States. Upon returning to Italy, he became a devoted member of the Italian Communist Party in the late 1950s. By his mid-forties, he had been elected to represent Reggio Emilia in the Italian Parliament. It is in Parliament that Walter’s life begins to unravel. He holds ambitions in his position, particularly in advocating for workplace safety reforms. However, the Party isn’t as supportive of these measures as he had hoped; they have other priorities they want addressed first.

Meanwhile, Walter becomes involved with Nuccia Cors, a younger woman who works in publishing. Nuccia challenges Walter’s beliefs—beliefs he has long held as sacred. For Walter, Communism is almost a religion. The novel then evolves into a sort of existential crisis, as Walter begins to question his ideological commitments and his place in the world. In this sense, The Communist reminds me of Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist. The novel is deeply political, referencing Stalin, The Communist Manifesto, and the history of socialism. It adds to the growing list of Italian political literature I’ve been reading; I recently finished Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara, which also grapples with political and ideological themes. I’m nearly finished with The Communist, and I can’t wait to see how the story concludes.

What have you finished reading?

I have been making serious progress on my reading challenges during my first month of venturing across the vast European literary landscape. I concluded it with a name I hadn’t encountered before: Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer. He is a prominent figure in Austrian literary circles and was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least four times (1959, 1960, 1962, 1964). It was during a random trip to the bookstore that I came across his novel, The Strudlhof Steps. The book’s heft—at over 800 pages, it is the very definition of “hefty”—immediately caught my interest, although I initially held myself back from acquiring a copy. I eventually relented and made it part of my 2025 Top 25 Reading List.

Originally published in German in 1951 as Die Strudlhofstiege oder Melzer und die Tiefe der Jahre, the novel was translated into English seven decades later. The titular Strudlhof Steps refer to a famed, elaborate outdoor staircase in Vienna, opened in 1910. It connects two levels of the hilly area north of central Vienna. From Boltzmanngasse—a residential quarter near the university, inhabited by many professionals—you descend to the more modest and varied Alsergrund. Primarily set in the 1920s, the novel weaves in and out of past and present, as memories take readers back to 1908–1911. It chronicles the lives and fortunes of a Dickensian cast of characters residing in the vicinity of the staircase. The most prominent among them is Melzer; the novel is alternatively titled Melzer and the Depth of the Years. Melzer served as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Balkans and is one of the key threads binding the characters together. Within his orbit are individuals born into well-off families, including military officers, businessmen, government officials, physicians, artists, academics, lawyers, and their families.

Serving as a guide through this landscape is an unnamed narrator who captures the concerns of the characters. The minutiae of their lives are intertwined with the narrator’s opinions and insights, adding nuance to the narrative. The abundance of storylines reminded me of Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, particularly in the way the characters are tied to a specific place and time. But there’s more to the story than just a tapestry of lives. In a way, the stairs function as an allegory. Socio-economic themes are subtly woven into the narrative. The upper section is occupied by the upper middle class, while the lower section belongs to lower-level employees. Melzer himself comes from a lower-middle-class background. Overall, The Strudlhof Steps is an insightful story about a specific place and time, and its diverse cast of characters brings the novel vividly to life.

From Austria, my literary journey next took me to Russia—or at least, my next read was written by a renowned Russian writer. It was through “must-read” lists that I first came across Vladimir Nabokov (Владимир Владимирович Набоков). His novel Lolita is a recurring presence on such lists, and it was the first Nabokov novel I read. A couple of years later, I would read my second Nabokov novel. Interestingly, King, Queen, Knave was Nabokov’s second published novel. It originally appeared as Король, дама, валет (Korol’, dama, valet) in 1928, under the pseudonym Sirin, and was translated into English by his son Dmitri four decades later.

At the heart of the novel is Franz Bubendorf, a hopelessly nearsighted and bland young man from a small provincial town. When we first meet him, he is in a train compartment on his way to Berlin. He is heading to the capital to seek employment at his well-to-do uncle’s clothing store. Unbeknownst to him, Franz is sharing the compartment with his uncle, Kurt Beyer (his mother’s cousin), and Kurt’s young wife, Martha. Franz has never met either of them before. Seen through Franz’s poor eyesight, Martha appears sensual and passionate. Kurt, on the other hand, is a self-satisfied and successful businessman. Shortly after Franz begins working in the store, he becomes enamored with Martha’s beauty. They soon initiate a secret love affair. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Martha is a deeply discontented woman. In many ways, she evokes Gustave Flaubert’s titular Madame Bovary. Her distaste for her husband becomes more pronounced, and this emotional strain takes a toll on Franz, whose health begins to decline.

In a way, King, Queen, Knave is Nabokov’s attempt to replicate the love triangle trope. The early scenes mimic the conventions of traditional love triangles. The encounters between Franz and Kurt were comedic, a parody of familiar scenes in love triangles. There is a reason why Nabokov called the novel his gayest. For his part, Kurt still cherished his wife even though it was reciprocated with frigidity. Things started to take for a dark turn as the story moved forward. As Franz find himself becoming a numb extension of his lover, he has become her shadow. Nevertheless, it was palpable that the characters were unable to move outside of the box Nabokov created for them; it was one of the novel’s flows. Still, King, Queen, Knave, is a compelling satire of middle-class adultery and the love triangle trope.

What will you read next?