Chicago. Haymarket. 2012. ISBN 9781608461752Kangkala, a calypsonian, is the narrator of Earl Lovelace’s Caribbean saga. A self-styled “poet of the revolution,” he was active in the Black Power mo…
FICTION
- Sam Garrett, tr. New York. Hogarth. 2012. ISBN 9780770437855Not since watching the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover has bearing witness to others’ fine dining been so voyeuri…
- Bamenda, Cameroon. Langaa Research & Publishing CIG (African Books Collective, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9789956727377This absorbing novel vividly brings the African diaspora to life. The main char…
- New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2013. ISBN 9780300176698 How to represent evil and torture bearably, enhance or put into perspective a lasting and frequently trite and polemical li…
- New York. Riverhead. 2012. ISBN 9781594488177Patrick Flanery’s first novel, Absolution, captures the complicated philosophies and mores of the educated and liberal occupants (in addition…
- Nice, France. Editions Baie-des-Anges. 2013. ISBN 9782917790502Without the back-cover photograph and blurb indicating that Jean Emelina is a retired professor of the University of Nice–Sophia An…
- André Naffis-Sahely, tr. & afterword. London. Arabia Books. 2012. ISBN 9781906697426When Rashid and Omar spend an hour together on a flight from Algiers to Constantine, the former decides he will…
- Don Bartlett, tr. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2012 (©2011). ISBN 9781555976262Translated at last, Per Petterson’s second novel is a portrait of the artist as a young rebel. Its style and th…
- Ben Ryder Howe, ed. Joshua Cohen, intro. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2013. ISBN 9781564788160 To understand the mind of those who live in the veiled, history-bound, intellectually s…
- Jennifer Marquart, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2013. ISBN 9781934824702 Open Letter Books takes chances with German writers, and for this we should be thankful. Last September, it…
- Tallahassee, Florida. Cheeky Frawg. 2012. ISBN 9780985790400After reading the singular stories in Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s first collection, what lingers in the mind is their deadpan strangeness…
- Paris. Gallimard. 2013. ISBN 9782070126699Marie NDiaye’s new novel, with perhaps the most complex plot of any of her works, tells a story of four generations, taking place over more than fifty ye…
- Paris. P.O.L. 2013. ISBN 9782818017852The narrator of Christine Montalbetti’s latest novel is a French writer who has decided to spend a few months in Kyoto in order to work on a book, an “uncert…
- New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307962577Set against Charles Taylor’s rule of Liberia, Alexander Maksik’s novel transmutes the bloody madness of civil war into the advancing disorientation of Jacqueli…
- Victoria Cribb, tr. New York. Seven Stories. 2012. ISBN 978-1609804268Ovar LoveStar is the seventy-one-year-old chairman of a vast corporate entity whose tendrils infiltrate every aspect of life. In A…
- Helen Constantine, ed. Margaret Jull Costa, tr. New York. Oxford University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780199583270Madrid Tales is a wonderful collection of short stories written by a diverse cadre o…
- Pasadena, California. Red Hen Press. 2013. ISBN 9781597092685Andrew Lam, author of the essay collections Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora and East Eats West: Writing…
- 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…
- 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,…