New York. Vertigo. 2011. ISBN 9781401229696Daytripper is the rarest of graphic novels—a work meeting all the expectations of great literature that somehow emerged from the grinding gears of the Americ…
FICTION
- José Francisco Fernández, ed. New York. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2011. ISBN 978-0547550404The fourteen stories in A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman are arranged chronologically from 1964…
- Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2011. ISBN 9781934824375In just a few short years, Open Letter Books, based out of the University of Rochester, has quite impress…
- New York. Black Lawrence. 2009 (rel. 2010). 191 pages. $16. isbn 978-0-9815899-5-4"The link between butterflies and dreams is poorly understood." So begins the title story of this wry and witty collec…
- Adriana Hunter, tr. New York. Other Press. 2011. 231 pages. $11.95. isbn 978-1-59051-399-6There are many things to like in this smart, droll, finely crafted novel—and not least the sleek narrative sym…
- Thomas Teal, tr. New York. New York Review Books. 2011. 120 pages. $14. isbn 978-1-59017-378-7Were it possible to measure novels in decibels, as though the action left some sonic footprint on the worl…
- Kim Thompson, tr. Seattle, Washington. Fantagraphics (W. W. Norton, distr.). 2010. 96 pages, ill. $24.99. isbn 978-1-60699-382-8Caught somewhere on the structural continuum between the comic book and…
- Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi & Victoria Offredi Poletto, tr. Bloomington. Indiana University Press. 2011. 264 pages. $22.95. isbn 978-0-253-22296-1Cristina Ali Farah, born of a Somali father and an…
- Arthur B. Evans et al., eds. Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2010. xviii + 767 pages. $39.95. isbn 978-0-8195-6955-4Readers who know science fiction (sf) largely from movies, telev…
- Munich. Carl Hanser. 2010. 331 pages. €21.90. isbn 978-3-446-23562-5The title of Was davor geschah refers to the narrator's response to his new girlfriend's question, "What went on…
- Peter Bush, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2011. ISBN 9781934824191In "Family Life," the opening story to Quim Monzó's newly translated collection of stories, a little boy—fearing a ritual dism…
- New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2011. ISBN 9780374174231Throughout his work, Amitav Ghosh writes with a global perspective, evident not only in the range of locations and variety of characters…
- Edward Gauvin, tr. Atlanta, Georgia. Top Shelf. 2011. ISBN 9781603090735Ludovic Debeurme's Lucille is an entrancing addition to the library of contemporary bande dessinée …
- New York. Knopf. 2011. ISBN 9780307957122When it comes to contemporary British fiction, I've always been more of a Martin Amis man than a Julian Barnes one. However, after reading Barnes's latest Man…
- William M. Hutchins, tr. Cairo. The American University in Cairo Press (Oxford University Press, distr.). 2011. ISBN 9789774164620Fadhil al-Azzawi (b. 1940), an Iraqi author of several novels and poet…
- New York. Grove. 2011. 350 pages. $24. isbn 978-0-8021-1981-0In July 2007 Aura Estrada, a promising Mexican writer studying in New York, sustained fatal neck injuries from bodysurfing off the Pacific…
- The Ghostwriter. Alice Copple-Tošić, tr. Belgrade, Serbia. Zavod za udžbenike. 2009. 892 pages. RSD1895. isbn 978-86-17-16436-0 The Five Wonders of the Danube…
- Paris. P.O.L. 2011. 329 pages. €19. ISBN 978-2-8180-1337-3In a rural and agreeably timeless Japan, an uncle disappears—or rather evaporates—from his brother's home. Many years later, his nephew goes i…
- Cairo. The American University in Cairo Press. 2011. xv + 433 pages. $39.95. ISBN 978-977-416-390-6Samia Mehrez has chosen to portray the literary life of Cairo in the last one hundred years by select…