New York. Riverhead. 2013. ISBN 9781594487293When we meet the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s novel, he is “huddled on the packed earth” under his mother’s cot, feverish and suffering from hepatiti…
FICTION
- Douglas Brinkley, ed. Johnny Depp, intro. New York. Infinitum Nihil / Harper. 2013. ISBN 9780062248398It is customary when a reviewer has personal or business relationships with the aut…
- Antony Shugaar, tr. New York. Europa. 2012. ISBN 9781609450656I Hadn’t Understood follows a lawyer named Vincenzo Malinconico who lives in Naples and has an ex-wife, two children, and a…
- Madrid. Editorial Funambulista. 2012. ISBN 9788494029325What is most striking about Diego Cornejo Menacho’s third novel is how his proliferating imagination frees just about every known narrative…
- Clifford Endres & Selhan Endres, tr. London. Telegram. 2012. ISBN 978-1846591488Selçuk Altun’s sixth novel, The Sultan of Byzantium, positions itself as a skillfully constructed tribute t…
- Michael Hofmann, tr. New York. Other Press. 2012. ISBN 9781590513248Critically acclaimed throughout European literary circles, Swiss author Peter Stamm achieved his breakthrough in the United States w…
- Adriana Hunter, tr. London. Atlantic. 2012. ISBN 9781848874183Set in World War II, during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Noah’s Child recounts the story of Joseph, a ten-year-old c…
- Paris. Seuil. 2013. ISBN 9782021003949Alain Mabanckou is one of the most widely read and discussed African writers today. After publishing a number of well-received novels and winning several prizes,…
- New York. W.W. Norton. 2012. ISBN 9780393083217Sylvia Plath did it with the oven door ajar. John Kennedy Toole did it with a garden hose. Hart Crane did it with the famous farewell, “Goodbye, eve…
- David Williams, tr. Brooklyn, New York. Archipelago. 2012. ISBN 9781935744320Mama Leone, by Miljenko Jergović (b. 1966), has an interesting structure: the first part of the book, “W…
- Brian Bergstrom & Lucy Fraser, tr. Oakland, California. PM Press (IPG, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9781604865912“My wish is for the words in these stories to . . . lodge themselves within the b…
- Bristol. Tangent. 2012. ISBN 9781906477608My Mother Was an Upright Piano is Tania Hershman’s second collection of very short stories—her first, The White Road and Other Stories, was…
- Liesl Schillinger, tr. New York / London. Viking / Chatto & Windus. 2012. ISBN 9780670023509 / 0701186944Readers and foreign presses have embraced Every Day, Every Hour as an enchant…
- Minneapolis, Minn. Milkweed. 2013. ISBN 9781571310972In Tamas Dobozy’s previous book, Last Notes and Other Stories (see WLT Nov. 2006, 55), Hungarian survivors of World War II are ju…
- Ljouwert, Netherlands. Friese Pers. 2012. ISBN 9789033002625In this slim novel, Sietse de Vries continues to play with variations on the crime-novel formula. In Kugels foar Kant (see WLT…
- New York. Harper. 2012. ISBN 9780061493348Michael Chabon’s novel Telegraph Avenue, on a basic level, is about work life and home life in Oakland, California. Longtime friends Archy and Nat ow…
- Mexico City. Alfaguara. 2013. ISBN 9786071123688Through the intricate plot and multitude of characters, both principal and peripheral, Carmen Boullosa’s novel Texas seems to score a dire…
- New York. Simon & Schuster. 2012. ISBN 9781451633924A June 2012 Indie Next pick, this first novel follows six years in the life of an educated middle-class Athenian family, its father long dead, a…
- Sally-Ann Spencer, tr. London. Harvill Secker. 2012. ISBN 9781846554278Sympathy for a terrorist? Rebellion against preventive health-care measures? In Germany, Juli Zeh is a highly visible political a…
- Barcelona. Anagrama. 2012. ISBN 978-8433972359It is no accident that Juan Villoro is classified as a postmodern author. We know that, in general, literary criticism resorts to the postmodern label whe…
- Toronto. Doubleday Canada. 2012. ISBN 9780385667142The Magic of Saida, set in India, East Africa, and Canada, is the latest novel by the prolific African Asian Canadian author M. G. Vassanji.…
- Peter Sherwood, tr. London. Stork Press. 2012. ISBN 9780957132665In the first paragraph of this “were-tale for six actors, five voices, two players,” narrator Jerne Voltampere proffers fair warni…
- Camellia Nieh & Jonathan Lloyd-Davies, tr. New York. Vertical. 2012. ISBN 9781934287385In Edge, Koji Suzuki devises an inspired premise and pummels it half to death. Suzuki has…
- Victoria Cribb, tr. London. Telegram. 2012. ISBN 9781846591242Valdimar Haraldsson, in The Whispering Muse, finds that fish are both sustenance and inspiration. His preoccupation with fish con…
- Marian Schwartz, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2012. ISBN 9781934824368 Mikhail Shishkin has been publishing in Russia to acclaim and accolades for almost twenty years. His work is a…