Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2022. 369 pages.
IS MARTYRDOM FATED, a choice, both? Thus the parameters of Rilla Askew’s new novel, whose title and prologue leave no doubt of…
FICTION
New York. New Directions. 2022. 64 pages.IN “MAJAKOWSKIRING,” the second story in Yoko Tawada’s Three Streets, an unnamed narrator encounters an undead writer. Vladimir Mayak…
New York. Penguin. 2022. 320 pages. OTTESSA MOSHFEGH’S Lapvona is a study in power. It is an autopsy of the gaping gulf between abundance and misery, orchestrated by Vi…
New York. HarperVia. 2022. 224 pages. SOME NOVELS SHOUT their politics; others whisper them. Anuradha Roy’s compelling fifth novel, The Earthspinner, belongs t…
Seattle. Amazon Crossing. 2022. 128 pages. EMMELIE PROPHÈTE’S Blue is a study in liminality and alienation. Blue is set in a Miami airport, a liminal space whe…
San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2022. 168 pages. FOLLOWING PUBLICATION OF Masatsugu Ono’s Echo on the Bay and Lion Cross Point (translated by Angus Turvill; see…
New York. MCD. 2022. 272 pages. JONATHAN ESCOFFERY, recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize and the ASME Award for Fiction, builds a vibrant family saga from a series of interconne…
Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2022. 152 pages. SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA’S family was massacred in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Mukasonga was elsewhere and missed the carnage; forcing he…
New York. Viking. 2022. 288 pages. A DREAM: I am helping a boy fly a kite. We are in Afghanistan, where, it seems, all boys fly kites, especially in spring. Spring:…
Berkeley. Stone Bridge Press. 2022. 264 pages. EMMITT HAS A PLAN for the next year: move out of his in-laws’ house and into his dream home with his wife, Mirai, quit his unfulfi…
New York. Other Press. 2022. 160 pages. MIGUEL BONNEFOY FREEFALLS into his strangely alluring new novel, Heritage, which makes a desperate attempt to understand the internal…
Barcelona. Comba. 2021. 290 pages. CARMEN, a thirty-six-year-old professor, visits her hometown, Tarsis, a mining town in the province of Huelva in southern Spain. The return br…
Mexico City. Seix Barral. 2021. 394 pages.In Y LÍBRANOS DEL MAL, Santiago Roncagliolo’s latest novel, the Peruvian author and winner of the pre…
Fredericton, New Brunswick. Goose Lane Editions. 2022. 256 pages. THE EPIGRAPH TO Elaine McCluskey’s fourth collection of stories is drawn from her story “Hope”: “Life is just one ex…
New York. Liveright. 2022. 304 pages. THE PROTAGONIST OF the novel Time Shelter reads a newspaper article describing a geriatrics doctor who “decked out his office in the st…
New York. Viking. 2022. 403 pages. BOOKER PRIZE–NOMINATED Glory traces the tragic descent into violent despotism of democratic, newly free Zimbabwe (alias Jidada). This…
London. Picador. 2022. 336, 384, and 688 pages. SHIMON ADAF’S Lost Detective Trilogy embodies many worlds, attitudes, genres, and voices. Like Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan, it contains…
Dallas. Deep Vellum. 2022. 328 pages. WELL BEFORE THE current Russian invasion provided a global spotlight on Ukraine, contemporary Ukrainian writers were forging their own literary…
New York. Doubleday. 2022. 288 pages. ONE WOULD HARDLY expect a book that is wholly preoccupied with death to be full of energy and vibrant imagery, but that is just one way tha…
Brooklyn. Restless Books. 2022. 224 pages. “HOME” CAN BE hard to pin down when you’re uprooted from two continents. Family, friendships, and even one’s own identity scatter like…
New York. Gaudy Boy. 2022. 296 pages. FROM A STONE house in a tiny village at the edge of the Caspian Sea to the close quarters of a two-room Soviet apartment in the urban landscape…
New York. World Editions. 2022. 268 pages. STINE PILGAARD’S SLIM novel digs into the psyche of a young woman who finds herself displaced into a remote corner of her native Denma…
St. Paul, Minnesota. River Boat Books. 2020. 458 pages. TO DISTINGUISH THEIR art from that of the crowds of writers publishing today, many authors wander off well-trodden paths to ex…
Eugene, Oregon. Resource. 2022. 221 pages. THIS IS A TOUCHING book, a moving gift when one is sorely needed. Old Dog is the life story of a dog and also a medi…
London. World Editions. 2021. 288 pages. THERE ARE PLACES we feel drawn to without knowing why—landscapes that beckon, cityscapes that call. For some people, it’s a travel desti…