July 2019
Sparse, Monochrome Scenes in Selva Almada’s Debut Create a Believable and Powerfully Visual World
Reviewed by Frances Riddle and Mariano Vespa
With The Wind That Lays Waste, Almada may have invented an entirely new literary genre, something that could be called Southern Cone Gothic.
“Lisbon Tales” Captures Various Angles of Portugal’s Capital, with a Focus on Salazar’s Dictatorship
Reviewed by David Frier
A new anthology collects a wide range of writing inspired by the Portuguese city, from Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago to authors from former colonies like Kalaf Angelo and Orlanda Amarílis, but it leaves out some key short-story writers.
Lives and Deaths Imagined: A Review of Gabriela Ybarra’s “The Dinner Guest”
Reviewed by Craig Epplin
The Spanish author and Man Booker International nominee elides the distance between novel and memoir in a book that confronts the killing of her grandfather by the ETA and her mother's death from cancer.
June 2019
Selahattin Demirtas, Jailed in Turkey since 2016, Makes His Fiction Debut with “Dawn”
Reviewed by Rafia Zakaria
The Turkish writer of Kurdish descent has been jailed since 2016. The stories in Dawn can be read as a series of missives written by Demirtas from the inside, home to so many of the Turkey's best and brightest, dissenters who have refused to bow down to Erdogan’s demands.
“Keeping / the window open” Brings Together a Fascinating Trove of Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop’s Work
Reviewed by Allison Grimaldi-Donahue
From interview to collage, from poetry to prose, from the 1950s to the 2000s, this volume edited by Ben Lerner combines a generous compendium of the Waldrops' work as poets, translators and publishers with a selection of essays and interviews in which they meditate on their craft.
May 2019
Disagreeable, Memorable Characters People Duanwad Pimwana’s “Bright” and “Arid Dreams”
Reviewed by Benjamin Woodard
A novel first published in Thailand in 2003 and a collection of short-stories stretching back to the mid-1990s, both now available in English for the first time, show a confident writer at the top of her game, with a distinctive skill to conjure unique personalities on the page.
April 2019
“Broken Stars,” a New Anthology Edited by Ken Liu, Casts a Fresh Look at Chinese Sci-Fi
Reviewed by Anjie Zheng
From sharp-edged social criticism to extravagant and alluring imagery, this collection of short-stories displays the wide range of the genre in contemporary China
March 2019
Biljana Jovanović‘s Daring “Dogs And Others”: Growing Up as a Queer Woman in Communist Yugoslavia
Reviewed by Hannah Weber
Since its original publication in 1980, this genre-defying book has gained a cult reputation that established Jovanović as an important counterculture figure in Serbia. Written in a highly experimental style, the book follows a woman’s coming of age in 1970s Belgrade, creating a fragmentary amalgam of life in socialist Belgrade, intense sexual relationships, and family conflicts in the shadow of old age.
February 2019
Narrative Missteps, Unconvincing Characters Plague Lina Wolff’s “The Polyglot Lovers”
Reviewed by Lily Meyer
A new novel by the Swedish author reads like a caricature of sexism in the literary world that ends up being as sexist as its misogynous protagonist.
January 2019
In “HELL,” Alasdair Gray Creates a Celtic, Wind-lashed Translation of Dante’s “Inferno”
Reviewed by Jamie Mackay
By fusing a dialect-laden verse with knowledge and respect for Dante’s original, the Scottish writer and illustrator has built a bridge across borders and nations.
November 2018
One-third Women, “The Milk Bowl of Feathers” Adds Provocative New Voices to the Surrealist Canon
Reviewed by Susan Aberth
Edited by Mary Ann Caws, this anthology delivers new insights into this radical movement and rectifies past omissions to its canon with more intellectually daring and provocative non-French and female voices.
“The April 3rd Incident” Showcases Yu Hua’s Daring and Unconventional Style
Reviewed by Andrew Hungate
This collection of early stories by the celebrated Chinese author shows a writer determined to make a name for himself in a literary world that at the time was rife with experimentation.
October 2018
Atrocity at a Distance, Absurdity Up Close in Dubravka Ugresic’s “American Fictionary”
Reviewed by Jeff Tompkins
In this book of essays, Ugresic juxtaposes reflections on the fate of her country with observations on everyday life in America.
In “Resistance,” Julián Fuks Takes the Fiction of Failed Writing a Step Further
Reviewed by Lily Meyer
The Brazilian-Argentine writer's novel resists drama. It resists the impulse to exaggerate, maybe even the impulse to tell stories.
September 2018
“What’s Left of the Night,” by Ersi Sotiropoulos, Reimagines C.P. Cavafy’s Feverish Days in Paris
Reviewed by Lynne Diamond-Nigh
In this fictional account of the last days of a long journey through Europe undertaken by Cavafy in 1897, the Greek poet's struggle against conventions, social and personal, takes center stage.
“Do You Hear in the Mountains…,” by Maïssa Bey, Probes the Untold Pasts of Algerian History
Reviewed by Jocelyn Frelier
In this charged work of autofiction, Bey explores her ties with the Algerian War for Independence, during which her father was killed.
August 2018
Intimate Experience Feels At Once Palpable and Remote in Jin Eun-Young’s “We, Day by Day”
Reviewed by Peter Campion
"We, Day By Day" is Jin Eun-Young’s first full collection published in English. Early on, she encountered Korean poetry of the 1980s and its spirit of political protest and carried the conviction and intensity of those verses into more mysterious, interior realms.
July 2018
Gunnhild Øyehaug Flirts with Hollywood While Considering the Essence of Life in “Wait, Blink”
Reviewed by Ane Farsethås
In her novel "Wait, Blink", Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug devises a whimsical, yet earnest probe into the human condition, filled with a dizzy range of topics. From golf books to “the essence of life”, from Tarantino to Dante, passing though fictions about the dream life of president George W. Bush and the childhood of literary theorist Paul de Man, it’s all equally worth a moment of curious observation.
June 2018
A Quietly Radical Tale of the Rise and Fall of Communist Russia in Eugene Vodolazkin’s “The Aviator”
Reviewed by Sam George Jackson
Born in 1900, Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up one day to find himself in a modern hospital, in 1999, with the body of a young man and memories that barely reach the 1930s. As he strives to figure out what happened to him, personal memories and historical investigation combine to create a harrowing narrative of Russia's history in the XX century, from the makings of revolution to the collapse of the Communist regime. "The Aviator" is a quietly radical novel, which challenges contemporary official narratives about Russia's past.
Gaël Faye’s Debut Novel, “Small Country,” Sets a Coming-of-Age Story amid the Rwandan Genocide
Reviewed by Emily Roese
A French bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, "Small Country" holds a mirror to the childhood of the Burundi-born rapper and author Gaël Faye, who emigrated to France with his French father, Rwandan mother, and younger sister in the 1990s. They were a Tusi family living in Burundi and decided to flee when they realized that the conflicts in war-torn Rwanda threatened their lives. In his perceptiveness, developing love of literature and nostalgia for a pre-war idyll, Gaby calls as much to Faye’s history as it does to the artistic career he would follow.