April Translations: Three New Books

Every month, new English translations appear. Here are three of April’s offerings.

Navidad & Matanza

Carlos Labbé. Will Vanderhyden, tr.

(Open Letter)

In Chilean writer Carlos Labbé’s short metafictional novel, two children go missing from the beach town of Matanza. The journalist narrator reports on the family’s case from an underground lab, where he and six others play a game in which they exchange chapters via email and wait for a fear-inducing drug to take its effect on them.

Dispute Over a Very Italian Pig

Amara Lakhous. Ann Goldstein, tr.

(Europa Editions)

With a journalist protagonist, this Turin-based mystery lightheartedly probes the challenges and joys of life a newly multicultural society.

Sankya

Zakhar Prilepin. Mariya Gusev & Jeff Parker with Alina Ryabovolova, tr.

(Dzanc Books) 

Drawing on his own experience as an activist, Zakhar Prilepin’s 2006 novel, now translated into English, was a cult sensation in Russia. In it we see the frontlines of the Russian opposition.