Kolkata. Seagull Books. 2021. 312 pages.
WHAT IS CHESS if not a metaphorical microcosm of a myriad of human institutions, conflicts, and systems? In Chess with My Grandfather,…
FICTION
New York. Pantheon Books. 2021. 304 pages. AT FIRST IT APPEARS that Morningside Heights is yet another campus tale of the professor-meets-grad-student variety, but Joshua He…
New York. Tor Books. 2020. 336 pages. CIXIN LIU likes to think big. Macromolecules, vast time spans, galaxies, and universes: these are just some of the materials Liu plays with…
Cairo. Hoopoe Press. 2021. 401 pages. THE ARABIC READER IS witnessing an evolution in the Arabic novel, particularly in the past decade and in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.…
New York. Verso. 2020. 196 pages. FOR HER SPLENDID Will and Testament (2019), Vigdis Hjorth allegedly based her narrative on family history (WLT, Spring 2020, 100).…
New York. Seven Stories Press. 2021. 48 pages. “ONCE UPON A TIME there was a man who worked very hard and very quickly, and who had left his soul far behind him long ago . …
New York. Random House. 2021. 384 pages. HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE is Imbolo Mbue’s second novel to be published; however, Mbue started writing it long before her first nov…
New York. Europa Editions. 2021. 192 pages. FORTY-SIX-YEAR OLD Mieko Kawakami refuses to trivialize the agony of adolescence; instead she bears witness to it. She has described her o…
Windsor, Canada. Biblioasis. 2021. 399 pages. “SEA LOVES ME,” the title story of Mia Couto’s latest collection, brims with secrets, seduction, and the wisdom of ancestors. Zeca Perpé…
New York. Riverhead. 2020. 328 pages. DRIFTS. An appropriate title for a book of mostly one-page stands? A noun perhaps, short for whatever washes up from the depths? No, Ka…
New York. Ecco. 2020. 290 pages. MAXIMA IS A washed-up Filipino action hero, trained in the deadliest of martial arts, but her days of fighting bad guys on the big screen are over. T…
New York. Contra Mundum Press. 2020. 147 pages. IT’S RAINING IN MOSCOW is the first collection of stories in English by Zsuzsa Selyem, a well-known Transylvanian Hungarian a…
New York. Alfred A. Knopf. 2020. 293 pages. MEGHA MAJUMDAR’S debut novel, A Burning, narrates the ramifications of a terrorist attack—as indicated by the title, the burning…
Paris. P.O.L. 2020. 304 pages. IEGOR GRAN IS the son of the former Soviet dissident Andrei Sinyavsky (1925–1997). This is the partly fictionalized account of Sinyavsky’s clandestine…
Miami. Alfaguara. 2020. 659 pages. GUILLERMO ARRIAGA’S Salvar el fuego has garnered him the prestigious Alfaguara Novel Prize for 2020. A major figure in Mexican cinema, Arr…
New York. Penguin. 2020. 272 pages. OTTESSA MOSHFESGH’S women do not assimilate. Whether the eponymous protagonist and her scatological fascinations in Eileen or the narrato…
McLean, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2019. 144 pages. THE TITLE OF Amanda Michalopoulou’s recent book, God’s Wife, is not deceiving. The novel is about God’s wife, the unnamed…
Maple Shade, New Jersey. Lethe Press. 2020. 234 pages. JESUS AND JOHN begins with the resurrection of Christ, here Yeshua. He rises from the grave, but instead of follo…
Montreal. QC Fiction. 2020. 212 pages. IT’S A LOVE STORY with an epigraph from a novel about a wife accused of murdering her husband: “Just look how Madame loves Monsieur! You see, s…
London. Istros Books. 2020. 372 pages. IMAGINE A LARGE building facing the rough waters of the Black Sea: a mental health hospital. Now imagine that same large building not quit…
New York. Riverhead Books. 2020. 327 pages. AS A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life, has already achieved the status of one of the best n…
Trans. Emma Ramadan. New York. Seven Stories Press. 2020. 144 pages. A POCKETABLE, one-sitting read, Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying is an engrossing transcontinental an…
San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2020. 146 pages. IN ECHO ON THE BAY, Masatsugu Ono drops readers into the middle of a small fishing village on the southern Japanese island o…
New York. Europa Editions. 2020. 448 pages. READERS OF THE WORK under review might be forgiven for thinking that they were enjoying Kawakami Mieko’s (b. 1976) Breasts and Eg…
New York. Open Letter. 2020. 150 pages. “AT THIS TIME of night, the armored helicopters fly over the city, the bats flutter against the office windows, and the rats scurry among…