New York. Bloomsbury. 2021. 152 pages.
JUST HOW MUCH can change in a day? For Lucas Pereyra, a fortysomething Argentine writer stuck in a rut—in his work, his marriage, his life—the…
FICTION
New York. Soft Skull Press. 2020. 288 pages. AOKO MATSUDA’S STORY cycle takes its title from the children’s story Where the Wild Things Are, the replacement of “Things” with…
Seattle. Amazon Crossing. 2021. 204 pages. COMMITTED TO KEEPING Tunisian works available in Tunisia, Yamen Manai has hitherto published with Éditions Elyzad. Now, Amazon Crossing and…
New York. Archipelago Books. 2021. 275 pages. “I LIVE IN A basement; a result of having come down in the world, in every sense.” So begins “A Sudden Liberating Thought,” one of thirt…
New York. Seven Stories Press. 2021. 240 pages. IN HER NATIVE Croatia, Ivana Bodrožić is controversial. While internally displaced as a nine-year-old at the beginning of the civil wa…
Windsor, Ontario. Biblioasis. 2020. 264 pages. WITH EVERY SENTENCE in his new novel, Roy Jacobsen shows how his characters carve their morality out of the dried driftwood found on th…
New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2021. 376 pages. MANY OF SONALLAH IBRAHIM’S novels explore how former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s version of socialism was…
San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2021. 156 pages. FIGHTING A DREADFUL illness, the eponymous narrator of this sobering novel reflects on a life shaped by personal misfortune and broad…
San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2021. 260 pages. SLIPPING IS THE FOURTH novel by Mohamed Kheir, the prolific Egyptian poet, novelist, and journalist, as well a…
Dallas. Deep Vellum. 2021. 238 pages. DEFYING DEFINITION AND regaining it only through comparison with formidable authors who take their art seriously, Magda Cârneci’s FEM i…
New York. Penguin Random House. 2021. 208 pages. A DEAD BABY and her haunted great-niece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez’s collection of disquietin…
Bloomington, Indiana. Slavica Publishers. 2020. 265 pages. “PLEASE, YOU CAN’T look at everything through the lens of politics.” Such is the impassioned plea fr…
Cheshire. Honford Star. 2021. 176 pages. THIS PANDEMIC YEAR has felt like a dystopia to many of us—we were told to stay away from family and friends, urged to remain inside our homes…
New York. Knopf. 2021. 288 pages. DEVOTED READERS OF the wondrously gifted sixty-six-year-old Israeli author David Grossman eventually fall hopelessly in love with him. There is a ma…
Evanston, Illinois. Curbstone Books. 2021. 133 pages. BENEATH ITS BUSTLING marketplace and wondrous architecture, Fez, Morocco, is no less susceptible to hatred. Tahar Ben Jello…
Austin. University of Texas Press. 2020. 232 pages. THE WIND TRAVELER is the latest novel to appear in English by Alonso Cueto, an author known for his Redención…
New York. HarperCollins. 2021. 356 pages. WE KNOW YOU REMEMBER is the second novel by Swedish writer Tove Alsterdal to be translated into English. Three other novels ha…
Dallas. Deep Vellum. 2021. 168 pages. IT IS ALWAYS cause for excitement and anticipation when a foreign writer is translated, into any language, but especially into English, where th…
New York. New Directions. 2021. 96 pages. ARGENTINE LITERARY GIANT César Aira chronicles a series of absurd and magical coincidences in this slim novel, whose disjointed narrative sl…
New York. Other Press. 2021. 176 pages. A SINGER, NOVELIST, and activist of progressive, secular renown, Zülfü Livaneli returns to anglophone readers with a slim narrative, polished…
New York. New Directions. 2021. 96 pages. TO CLASSIFY ANNE CARSON’S version of Euripides’ play The Trojan Women as a translation is to use the term lightly, for, in collabor…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021. 402 pages. IN DISCUSSIONS OF writers considered to be pushing the limits of the traditional detective story, the works of Cuban writer Leon…
Sheffield, UK. Tilted Axis Press. 2020. 220 pages. YAN GE’S Strange Beasts of China immerses you in its world through a series of interconnected tales, each one focusin…
Middleton, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2020. 354 pages. THE PREFACE OF Satie on the Seine announces fifty letters written by Basile Hudon Beaulieu from Paris, Fr…
New York. Penguin. 2020. 407 pages. PHIL KLAY’S COLLECTION of short stories, Redeployment (2014), dealt with the Iraq War, sometimes directly, sometimes as remembered or rel…