London. Seagull Books. 2019. 303 pages.
IN 2016 I CHATTED with Sonallah Ibrahim about his then-new novel, Berlin 69, published in Arabic in 2014.…
FICTION
Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2019. 185 pages. IN HER TOUR de force debut collection, Driving in Cars with Homeless Men, Kate Wisel weaves the stories…
Burlington, Vermont. Fomite. 2019. 236 pages. BOOKENDED BY A LYRIC from Emily Dickinson’s “We dream – it is good we are dreaming,” and from which its title is appropriately borrowed,…
Budapest. Jelenkor. 2019. 248 pages. FAMILY SAGAS HAVE recently become fashionable in Hungary. Following Péter Nádas’s excellent semi-autobiography (see WLT, March 2018, 94)…
Columbus, Ohio. Two Dollar Radio. 2020. 272 pages. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2019 in the UK, Yelena Moskovich’s Virtuoso has been rereleased for US audiences. A novel with su…
London. Harvill Secker. 2020. 197 pages. THE DEATH OF JESUS presumably concludes J. M. Coetzee’s cycle on the messianic figure. It is not surprising that this author wo…
Paris. Éditions de l’Olivier. 2019. 256 pages. A POSSIBLE TRANSLATION for the title might be: “There are different ways to inhabit the world.” Born in 1950 in Toulouse, where he stil…
Québec. Alto. 2020. 184 pages. “LIKE A BRIDGE over troubled waters,” Hélène Dorion watches over the flow of words-thoughts-images-emotions that carries Hanna through her discovery of…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 209 pages. THE BLACK CATHEDRAL is an interesting piece of prose writing. Due to its narrative structure, a series of sh…
London. Scribner. 2020. 195 pages. IN THE 1959 Brighton summer season, Ronnie Deane, or “The Great Pablo,” and his beautiful assistant and fiancée, Evie White, have become a sensatio…
New York. Black Cat. 2020. 432 pages. CHAN HO-KEI, who lives in Taiwan, is one of the most successful rising stars of Asian crime writing. Born in Hong Kong, he began writing a…
Austin, Texas. Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 2020. 193 pages. KEMAL VAROL is little known outside Turkey, where he is a minor star of contemporary literature. He is best known f…
New York. Other Press. 2020. 402 pages. IN HIS LATEST BOOK available in English, translated lucidly by Brendan Freely, prolific Turkish author, musician, and counterculture icon…
Victoria, Australia. Scribe. 2019. 934 pages. GEORGIA, AS A COUNTRY, has enjoyed some focus in the recent past among the literary circles of trade publishing and lit…
New York. Riverhead Books. 2020. 256 pages. IF LITTLE EYES had been written fifteen years ago, it would have been a work of fiercely imaginative science fiction. But in…
New York. Seven Stories Press. 2020. 568 pages. IT IS A RARE pleasure to find a graphic novel where energetic black-and-white drawings and simple but eloquent text are int…
Minneapolis. Coffee House Press. 2020. 296 pages. POUPEH MISSAGHI'S DEBUT, trans(re)lating house one, is a hybrid novel set in the aftermath of Iran’s 2009…
Blaenau-Ffestiniog, UK. Cinnamon Press. 2020. 250 pages. AT THE FEET OF MOTHERS, a Qur’anic trope for paradise, seems initially unrelated to smart but naïve, one-ey…
New York. New Directions. 2020. 144 pages. ADANIA SHIBLI'S THIRD NOVEL, Minor Detail, cements her position among the top ranks of Palestinian novelists working today. In her…
New York. W. W. Norton. 2019. 320 pages. HELON HABILA'S NEW NOVEL, Travelers, unfolds against the principle of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the Germ…
Minneapolis. Coffee House Press. 2020. 181 pages. IN HER SUCCINCT yet electrifying homage to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa conceptualizes the conti…
New York. Catapult. 2019. 243 pages. THE WINNER OF last year’s Man Booker International Prize, Celestial Bodies narrates its stories through three generations of a family li…
New York. Ballantine. 2020. 318 pages. THANKS TO THE WORK of Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkins, English audiences can experience the latest offering from the historical fiction artist,…
New York. New Directions. 2020. 64 pages. ANNE CARSON'S LATEST published work is brilliantly conceived but untidily written. The idea of a feminist reinterpretation of Euripides’ pla…
Barcelona. Alfaguara. 2019. 352 pages. IN TIEMPOS RECIOS, Mario Vargas Llosa returns to a central theme in his fiction: political power and Latin American dictatorships…