Camilla Stein, ed. Jim Dingley, tr. London. Glagoslav. 2013. ISBN 9781782670766Natalka Babina’s Down Among the Fishes has all the charm of a bad adventure novel. Any aspirations of liter…
FICTION
New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307961716Moving among the sensuous gardens, Christian and Muslim schools, contested mosques and villages, and scarred battlefields of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where ji…
New York. Henry Holt / Macmillan. 2013. ISBN 9780805097450“But did any of it make him an asshole?” That is the question. Notably, it is the question posed by protagonist Nate Piven to Nate Piven. I su…
Rosalind Harvey, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2014. ISBN 9780374533953Continuing the exploration of Mexico that began in Down the Rabbit Hole, Quesadillas searches…
Mahendra Singh, ill. Brooklyn, New York. Melville House. 2013. ISBN 9781612191416Luminous Chaos is an enchanting twist on the steampunk novel and serves as a powerful sequel (and, in many way…
Arch Tait, tr. Moscow. GLAS. 2013 ISBN 9785717200974Russian literature’s geography, traditionally focused on the capitals and the surrounding countryside, has expanded dramatically in recent years. Ma…
Greenville, North Carolina. Old Harbour Press. 2013. ISBN 9780615774749In the town of Eskişehir, Turkey, fate is called kismet. In Silk Armor, debut novelist Claire Sydenham never le…
Translated by the author. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Daily Star Books. 2013. ISBN 9789849027171The first thing that strikes the reader who encounters the stories in this collection is the narrator’s role: how…
Northampton, Massachusetts. Interlink. 2013. ISBN 9781566569576Hedy Habra’s collection of short stories is divided into four sections. The first two consist of nine delicately observed tales set in Eg…
Translated by the author. New Delhi. Penguin Books India. 2013. ISBN 97806700866448 Shanta Gokhale’s Crowfall (originally in Marathi) starts with a paradox. Before she can begin telling…
New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307701633The protagonist of Middle C is one Professor Joseph Skizzen, head of the music department at Augsberg Community College, later Whittlebaurer Coll…
New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307271792Max Ardin Sr., the suspiciously high-minded schoolmaster in Claire of the Sea Light, says something memorable about life’s painful separations wh…
Dhaka, Bangladesh. Daily Star Books. 2013. ISBN 9789849027188Sharbari Ahmed’s debut collection of short fiction, The Ocean of Mrs. Nagai: Stories, took her fifteen years to complete, includin…
Kaija Straumanis, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2013. ISBN 9781934824801High Tide is a challenging novel. It is not easy to read—the action jumps from present to past, then from past…
Montpellier, France. Éditions Chèvre-feuille étoilée. 2013. ISBN 9782367950037Évelyne Trouillot’s new novel is ostensibly about border laws separating father and daughter. Gérard, having lived in Broo…
Charleston, South Carolina. CreateSpace. 2012. ISBN 9781475126327To the growing list of East African literature focusing on the heritage of that region’s Asian population we may now add the title …
Enska textasmidjan. 2013. ISBN 9789979723110Unraveled is an absorbing read. It mixes the life story of the principal character, Frida, and the mechanisms she uses to survive abandonment by he…
Kay Heikkinen, tr. Northampton, Massachusetts. Interlink. 2013. ISBN 9781566569262Best known as the author of Saddam City (2003), a harrowing, partly autobiographical account of life in Sadda…
Mara Faye Lethem, tr. New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307700681To its great credit, this extremely competent novel has prompted uncritical vacuity and petty comments in some American book reviews. The…
Ljouwert, Netherlands. Frysk en Frij. 2013. ISBN 9789085660279Leo Popma has written an intriguing story with an intriguing title, As gong dêr in oar (As if another went there), a story that s…
New Delhi. Prakash Books India. 2012. ISBN 9788172344474It’s not very often a book locates itself in the 1990s of both India and England. This period is a particularly interesting one for India,…
New York. Ecco / HarperCollins. 2013. ISBN 9780062120397Chronologically, Philipp Meyer’s The Son starts in 1849 with Eli McCullough—one of the three perspectives presented in the book—be…
Silvester Mazzarella, tr. New York. MacLehose (Random House, distr.). 2013. ISBN 9781623650346In this dystopian novel, Davide Longo explores the true human nature that comes out during times of d…
New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307265746In this exquisite novel, Jhumpa Lahiri revisits some of her major themes—dislocation, assimilation, family connection, and the difficulties of love—but in this…
Gale A. Kirking, tr. Brno, Czech Republic. Real World Press. 2012. ISBN 9788090535718Jiří Hájíček is a Czech author, born in České Budějovice, southern Bohemia, where he spent his formative years in t…